USDA & Energy Department Create Investment in Clean Energy

By Moe White –

Andy Berke, Administrator of the Rural Utilities Service, US Department of Agriculture, and Becca Jones-Albertus, Acting Deputy Asst. Secretary For Renewable Energy at the US Department of Energy, hosted a webinar on January 16, 2024 focused on how to navigate the transition to clean energy by giving tools to partners on the state, local, and business levels.

Cost and Benefits

Berke noted that clean energy projects can create jobs, increase local tax revenues, provide direct payments to landowners, and keep the power on in case of wider grid outages and are able to keep the heat on in the winter and air conditioning in the summer.

“Solar and Wind are the cheapest forms of energy to build and operate in much of the country,” Berke said. Areas such as the South and Southwest enjoy ample solar opportunities 12 months of the year; many regions, ranging from offshore on both coasts to the Great Plains, can capture steady winds through most of the year to provide wind power.

Projects can be rooftop localized energy farms; offshore wind farms that serve entire communities; and solar or wind installations on private land, including agricultural land. It is estimated that less than 1% of all agricultural land would be needed for such integrated projects, in which productive, fertile cropland can host tall wind turbines, and grazing land—for large or small animals, and even pollinator habitats—makes an excellent host for solar arrays.

Community Buy-in

Berke noted that the transition from non-renewables—oil and coal—will require that many communities make decisions about siting such energy production facilities in their midst. Ideally, designers of proposed projects work closely throughout a community from the outset, to determine the best size of a project and its productivity.

The two departments are working with local and state governments as well as reaching out to private landowners to provide information about the benefits of clean energy, fund research, and ultimately make clean energy more accessible to farmers, including how to mitigate impacts of wind turbines on bird species and the variety of options available through “agrivoltaics.”

Opposition from Some Farm Interests

Garrett Hawkins of the Missouri Farm Bureau was one of the participants in the webinar. “We’re more impacted than any other group,” he said, describing how farmers, and absentee or corporate owners, express their concern about using farmland for wind or solar. The American Farm Bureau believes that energy projects should be located on marginal rather than prime farmlands.

But Lynn Clarkson of the American Farmland Trust Board and an Illinois grain producer, said that “As a fourth-generation farmer in Illinois with prime farmland, the modeling suggests clean energy will cover 83 million acres by 2070, half of it prime farmland. Can we blend solar with agriculture use?” she asked. She noted that her own family was able to keep their farm only because they allowed a clean energy installation to rent land from them.

According to Secretary Jones-Albertus, while utilities’ solar use starts at 1,200 acres, wind turbine installations leave most land open for farmers.

What Crops are Compatible with Wind Farms?

Berke responded that vertical rotating solar panels are easily coupled with grazing for cattle and horses. Under USDA programs, rather than benefitting big agriculture and solar companies at the expense of local people in rural areas, 90% of siting money will go to cooperatives owned by their residential farm members. The Department works coops and their members to ensure that they’re getting maximum funding so that benefits stay in rural America.

One stumbling block arises if a local community opposes a clean energy installation, even when it would benefit both the community and the larger region. Without at least some community support, a project can die, and the benefits—lower energy costs, profit to farmers, reliable energy from the regional grid—will be lost. To avert that problem many states, most recently including Michigan, can now override a community’s opposition if the state determines a project will benefit the larger region.

Overall, solar and wind farms are the future of energy production in the United States. Flying over Texas and New Mexico, one sees endless arrays of wind turbines that seem to have no negative impact on the agricultural activity going on beneath them. And, in fact, during the collapse of Texas’s state energy corporation—the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)—during the blizzard of 2022, it was solar and wind that kept many residents from freezing, while ERCOT gouged businesses and residents by billions of dollars using “cost of delivery” pricing.