Two years ago, Kansas repealed a law requiring that 20 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable sources by 2020, seemingly a step backward on energy in a deeply conservative state.
Yet by the time the law was scrapped, it had become largely irrelevant. Kansas blew past that 20 percent target in 2014, and last year generated more than 30 percent of its power from wind. The state may be the first in the country to hit 50 percent wind generation in a year or two, unless Iowa gets there first.
Some of the fastest progress on clean energy is occurring in states led by Republican governors and legislators, and states carried by Donald J. Trump in the presidential election.
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As renewable energy costs keep falling, the chances for such cooperation between blue and red states will increase. So even as the Trump administration seems to sit out the climate emergency, experts who spend time talking to governors see a way forward.
“I think the answer is that we don’t need these silly wars. Let’s not even try to agree on climate change,” said Hal Harvey, chief executive of Energy Innovation, a think tank in San Francisco. “Let’s just get the job done.”
