(Estherville)– Iowa Lakes Community College and Emmet county have received some special recognition for wind energy. They were recently named recipients of the Gold County Seal Award.
Dan Lutat, Director of Government Affairs and Special Project at Iowa Lakes, tells KUOO news the award was made possible through the American Wind Energy Association…
“Really what the award does is recognize what’s going on at the local levels in the wind energy field. That’s everything from manufacturing to installed wind capacity to education and those types of things, to kind of recognize what’s going on and the kind of support that wind energy has seen. We’ve been working with an organization called “Power Up Iowa”. For the past several months “Power Up Iowa” has basically made attention between the messaging that’s going on at the national level through the American Wind Energy Association and also right down to the local level. So really what this does is it really recognizes the fact that Iowans have really gotten behind wind energy from a practical standpoint both from an energy perspective but also from a jobs perspective and what we’re doing is creating jobs from everything from operations and maintenance to manufacturing to energy production.”
Lutat says it also speaks volumes for the Wind Energy and Turbine Technology program at Iowa Lakes Community College…
“If there’s one thing that we have not done in the past is cut corners in terms of building the kinds of technicians that the industry needs. And typically with the education these students walk out with, they’re looking at recession proof jobs that give them access to a great family income and good stability for a long time in an industry that still has a lot of room for growth.”
Lutat applied for the award on behalf of both Emmet county and Iowa Lakes…
“And this was a pilot program really between in three states initially: here, New Mexico and Texas, to basically see from an advocacy perspective what can we do to recognize what’s going on so that we can build a more congruent message from the national level down to the local level. And so when they announced this program was out there it was just an extra fit for us to go ahead and nominate for it because we’ve seen a lot of support for the wind energy program over the years and it continues to serve the industry very well.”
The designation was recently awarded during a virtual ceremony.
