GREENSBURG, KANSAS achieved 100% renewable energy by 2013

Report (2013): “Other times they [tornados] level entire towns. That is what happened the night of May 4, 2007, when an EF-5 tornado (for non-Kansans, that’s a really freaking big — the biggest, in fact) nearly two miles wide hit the town of Greensburg, a farming community in south-central Kansas. Almost all of the 1,383 residents lost their homes, nine died, and the town was left looking like this… On a larger scale, the city of Greensburg teamed up with John Deere Renewable Energy and the Kansas Power Pool to build a production-scale wind farm five miles outside of town. Estes describes the wind farm the same way some dude at the bar might describe his ’67 Pontiac GTO: “Yeah, there are 10 units of 1.25 megawatt Suzlon turbines, generating 12.5 megawatts in total.” The juice flows into the Kansas Power Pool, which feeds a number of local municipalities, but Greensburg receives renewable energy credits and the bragging rights to getting 100 percent of its power from the wind” ( Daniel Penner, “This town was almost blown off the map – now it back and super green”, Grist, 2 April 2013: http://grist.org/cities/this-town-was-almost-blown-off-the-map-now-its-back-and-super-green/ ).