The CityBus wind turbines on Canal Road were installed in 2011 and have become an integral part of the Lafayette skyline. Staff photo by Alex Farris
A Purdue University study shows that Hoosiers have grown fond of the wind turbines that now populate many rural counties.
Linda Prokopy, an associate professor of natural resources planning, said much of the research on attitudes toward wind energy and wind farms has focused on coastal states and the reasons people don’t want turbines in their communities.
She and Kate Mulvaney, a former graduate student, wanted to know how people in the Midwest feel about having wind farms in their communities and the factors that led some places to embrace or reject them.
Prokopy and Mulvaney published two studies on their results in the journals Energy Policy and Environmental Management. One focused on Benton County, which has embraced wind farms. The other study compared Benton County with two other Indiana counties — Boone County, which rejected wind farm development, and Tippecanoe County, which at the time still was considering wind farms. The researchers conducted surveys and interviews and studied local newspaper articles on wind energy.
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