By Nadia Ramlagan
Public News Service
Appalachian communities in Kentucky are poised to become manufacturing hubs for the wind energy industry, experts say.
The region’s workforce, accessible transportation routes, and stash of coal ash deposits — which contain rare earth metals needed for turbine production — all point to a role for Appalachia in the industry’s supply chain.
Larry Holloway, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Kentucky, said wind energy is a quickly growing industry in America. He pointed out more than 11% of all power produced in the U.S. comes from wind turbines and the number grows by 2% each year.
“Wind is pretty inexpensive,” Holloway explained. “It depends in part on where in the country you are, how much wind you have and so forth, but it is one of the lowest cost energy sources. And in 2024, several months in a row, wind outproduced coal nationally.”
According to federal data, the American wind energy industry currently supports more than 120,000 jobs and the number of wind turbine technicians is expected to grow by 60% over the next decade.
Critics have argued wind power comes with expensive production and maintenance costs, and long-term environmental impacts.
Mike Shields, senior economist for ReImagine Appalachia, said to help with the transition to wind-based power, decommissioned coal power plants could be repurposed as manufacturing facilities for parts used in wind turbines.
“We know that wind turbines are major infrastructure and there are a lot of working parts in those,” Shields emphasized. “How our communities can participate in that supply chain is really the key thing that we want to take a look at.”
While it remains unclear how tariffs will affect the nation’s ability to develop more wind turbine parts, Holloway stressed U.S.-based manufacturing is strong.
“There are a number of final assembly lines and parts that are already made in the U.S.,” Holloway underscored. “We may, in fact, see even more demand in that area coming in the future as well.”
According to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, 33% of Americans think a wind turbine farm would positively affect their local economy, while 9% said wind turbines would hurt it. Another 27% said installing a wind turbine farm would make no difference.