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Karen Uhlenhuth/Energy News Network

alternative fuels

Solar Advocates Raise Questions About Iowa Group Campaigning Against Net Metering, Suspect Utility Company

By Karen Uhlenhuth/Energy News Network | March 12, 2019

Iowa clean energy advocates suspect the state’s largest utility is secretly behind a new organization claiming to represent farmers, consumers and businesses that oppose the state’s solar policies. The utility neither confirmed nor denied a role in setting up the group and a spokeswoman for MidAmerican Energy did not directly answer a question about its role in the group. But solar industry supporters said the timing and similarities in messaging suggest a link. “This group didn’t exist until the utilities, particularly MidAmerican, started pushing a bill that would decimate the distributed solar industry in Iowa,” said Josh Mandelbaum, a lawyer with the Environmental Law & Policy Center. In late January, a few weeks before the introduction of two bills that would impose new costs on solar customers, a website and Facebook page surfaced for an organization calling itself the REAL Coalition, which claims it “gives voice to Iowa consumers, farmers and businesses on the energy issues affecting our state.”

The website decries what it calls the “solar cost shift,” and urges legislators to “keep the interests of ALL your constituents in mind and vote YES” on bills moving briskly through both chambers that would impose substantial new fees on electricity customers who generate some of their own power.

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Investigative Reporting in Iowa

Iowa City mobile home park replacement promises unkept

Promised help for residents at a deteriorating mobile home park tabbed for redevelopment hasn't happened, so something new is needed.

Source: The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA)

Register watchdog report leads to state investigation

Two state agencies and a non-profit legal aid organization for low-income residents are investigating property managers named in a Des Moines Register watchdog story for allegedly ignoring rental property defects.

Source: Des Moines Register

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