Welcome to this month’s edition of the Wisconsin Energy Broadcast, brought to you by the Perpetual Notion Machine. Producers Heather Allen and Nan Fey talk with Chelsea Chandler, Director of Environmental Initiatives at the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences Arts and Letters. Back in 2014, the academy published the Climate Forward Report, and have just published an update. Chelsea mentions that renewable energy in the state has progressed dramatically in the last few years. In just one year, 2016, the number of installations matched the total of all previous years combined. An example is the Solar Dairyland Cooperative out of LaCrosse, which has over a dozen solar projects planned or currently in progress. Wisconsin has met the mandate of at least 10% power from renewable energy, but the drawback is that half of it mostly comes from wind power transmitted from Iowa. And Wisconsin lags behind other Great Lakes states which aim for 25% renewable, in most cases, by 2024.

Please listen to the entire interview from the audio file posted above. But if you would like more information, you can go to the report’s PDF, or browse a summary at the academy’s climate forward webpage.