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BBC NEWS | Programmes | World News America | Iowa's green energy policy struggle 

But the landscape is also a reminder that achieving energy independence is a formidable challenge and making an agricultural economy green is not easy. ... Farm workers cannot take subways to work, farmers have to drive long distances into the fields to sow and harvest their crops and to deliver them to markets. Farm animals themselves, not to put too fine a point on it, produce methane - a powerful greenhouse gas - that is trapped in the atmosphere. Those challenges have not stopped the state setting itself ambitious goals. Energy pioneers The Iowa Climate Change Advisory Panel recently wrote a report for Governor Chet Culver setting out how the state can reduce carbon emissions by 90% by 2030. The state has set up an Office of Energy Independence - surely the perfect place, I thought, to test how easy it will be for President Obama to achieve energy independence for the whole of America. There are plenty of energy pioneers to be found in Iowa. Roger Neuberger, a farmer, lives near Clear   [More...] [Less...]