Renewable energy and jobs up in rural areas

Bill Knight column for 2-21, 22 or 23, 2019

While an ambitious “Green New Deal” to convert the country to 100-percent renewable energy by 2030 is discussed in Washington, the rural Midwest is already heading that way, according to a new report verified by area experts.

Renewable energy is growing, says “Green Energy Sweeps across Rural America,” an 18-page study from the Natural Resources Defense Council, with support from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. The report shows how wind, solar and other energy-efficiency efforts are dominating the rural economy, growing jobs and investment.

Such green-energy sources outnumber coal, gas and oil, combined, says the study, using 2017 data from the Dept. of Energy. In Illinois, for example, the percentage of fossil-fuel jobs fell to 0.8 percent of all jobs; clean-energy jobs grew to 2.6 percent.

“Clean energy plays an outsize role in rural areas relative to the size of rural economies,” say the report’s chief authors, Arjun Krishnaswami and Elisheva Mittelman. “In 2017, more people in the rural Midwest were employed by clean energy than by fossil fuel power plants, extraction, refinement and transportation combined in 10 of 12 midwestern states.

“Clean energy is booming in the Midwest as a whole, but most of the recent additions are in rural areas,” they add. “Across the 12 Midwestern states [Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin], about 2.3 gigawatts of new renewable capacity was added in rural areas in 2017 – an increase of more than 10 percent over 2016.”

Peter Schwartzman, an environmental studies professor at Knox College, said, “I am not surprised to see that renewable energy is providing tons of jobs in our region. There are tremendous solar and wind resources available to us in the Midwest, and we have only just begun to harness it.”

The study also documents higher rates of growth in clean-energy jobs in rural areas, outpacing rural employment in general and also cities in particular. In Illinois, rural clean-energy jobs comprise 2.6 percent of total employment (compared to 2.0 percent in urban areas), and such jobs increased 5.5 percent in rural Illinois (compared to a minus 0.6 percent economy-wide), and 4.7 percent in cities (compared to up 0.9 percent economy-wide).

Also, “wind energy development has considerably increased the tax base in many rural places in Midwestern states,” the study shows, and “wind projects also often directly invest in infrastructure improvements and attract investments from corporations seeking renewable power for new facilities.”

Several energy developers are active throughout Illinois, including BHE Renewables (in Bureau County), Cypress Creek (Peoria County), Invenergy (McLean), Geronimo (Bureau, Lee and Whiteside Counties), Horizon (Tazewell County), and Orion (Stark County).

Federal and state incentives help, from Illinois’ Future Energy Jobs Act to the reauthorized Farm Bill.

Opposition remains, concedes Schwartzman, who’s also a Galesburg Alderman.

“The public wrongly assumes that since the sun isn't out all the time and the wind doesn't blow all the time that these two energy sources are inadequate for our energy-demanding society,” he says. But “both energy sources can be stored (for later use) and used to do things differently and better, such as electric cars/buses/trucks or electric furnaces.

“The recent shift has been getting little attention in the news,” he says. “So, most people, including local government agents, are surprised. Some have been reluctant to take the ‘jump’ despite the obvious advantages. The more we hear about it, the more ‘no-brainer’ this investment becomes.”

Individuals against such ventures tend to have two reasons, says Schwartzman, co-author of “The Earth Is Not for Sale” with his father David Schwartzman, a retired Howard University environmental scientist.

“From my experience, they 1) have a strong economic incentive for maintaining things the way they are; for example, those highly invested in fossil fuels or nuclear energy,” he says.

And “2) they generally are opposed to change; thus, I don't expect this news will do much to change their minds.”

However, energy companies are willing to invest in rural areas.

“I have been contacted by several solar developers – many who have historically been located on the coasts, where electricity is more expensive,” Schwartzman says. “They recognize the enormous potential for continued growth in this area. Many have set up large offices in Midwestern cities. They know that the next 10 years will see a dramatic shift to renewable-energy sources in the Midwest (and beyond).”