Op-ed: Rural Americans will make or break the clean energy transition

America’s clean energy transition needs the support of rural Americans, but they aren’t sold yet.

Achieving the United States’ clean energy goals, creating local energy independence, and avoiding the worst impacts of climate change requires building a lot of solar and wind farms. These projects will be spread over millions of acres, about 3% of the land we currently farm. Almost all of them will be built in rural America.

Right now, instead of embracing renewables as a new way to diversify local economies, keep family farms in the family and bring in much needed tax revenue, many rural communities are enacting policies that effectively ban commercial-scale clean energy. Often spurred by a small but very vocal minority, these decision makers are effectively opting out of the many economic, health and environmental benefits that clean energy can bring to their communities.

I live in one of these communities. My friends and neighbors are some of the folks on the front lines fighting these projects. They are conservative and liberal, farmers and non-farmers. They care passionately about our rural community, about its character and its future.

Bringing our rural lived experience to bear, the Rural Climate Partnership partnered with the Global Strategy Group to learn more about what can be done to effectively engage rural communities on clean energy projects. Late last year, we conducted two rounds of in-depth qualitative focus groups with Midwest rural voters across the political spectrum.

We learned that rural Americans generally support clean energy, but when projects are proposed in their community, residents have significant concerns about the major infrastructure changes coming to the bucolic settings they’ve appreciated their entire lives. Many rural people, despite evidence to the contrary, aren’t sure wind and solar are ready for prime time. Furthermore, they deeply distrust government and outside corporate interests making promises of economic windfalls. In the absence of factual information from people they trust to address these concerns, rural people are more open to digital disinformation.

To a solar or wind developer, the benefits of clean energy may seem like a no-brainer: new tax dollars to local government coffers, work that supports local businesses and suppliers, and lease payments that provide stable, reliable income that often exceeds traditional farm revenues and reduces their risks.

But rural residents have understandable skepticism. First, their aesthetic concerns are real. Many Americans choose to live in rural areas because of the natural beauty of the landscape, as well as their cultural connections to the land. Yet building renewables at scale will mean significant change for some rural communities. As one of our focus group participants said, “It sounds like a great idea, but is it going to be a massive eyesore every time I come to my town?”

Rural residents are also unsure about the economic benefits. We heard residents looking for more details on how much energy these farms will produce and how much it will cost to build them. They often assume that since the projects are built in their communities, they’ll be the ones paying for the costs, and they don’t trust vague promises about tax revenue for their communities.

The good news is that we see significant shifts in openness to renewable development when rural people are presented with accurate and compelling messages from reliable messengers, something I have seen with my own eyes.

People want to hear from other rural people who live in communities like theirs where these projects have already been built. One of our focus groups included a participant from a community where a clean energy project was built.  When he spoke about the benefits the project brought to his community, the tenor of the whole conversation changed. “I love [his] testimony,” one participant gushed. “I mean, I think someone like [him] would win me over.”

Even if they don’t work in agriculture, rural residents correctly recognize that farmers have a lot at stake in the clean energy transition and want to hear from them directly. We presented focus group participants with a story from a farmer who is still harvesting corn, but leasing out his less productive land for solar, which allows him to make more money and keep the farm in his family. This message resonated strongly with our focus group participants, who are well aware of how their farming neighbors may be struggling. As one woman said, “he’s actually still harvesting from his land and has the energy as well. So it seems like a benefit for everybody if the farmer can still farm and he’s also making money, instead of losing it. It seems like a lot of farmers are dealing with that recently.” Residents also supported the concept that farmers should have the right to decide what to do with their own private property.

Sharing basic information about the specifics and technology of clean energy can also drive support. One line in particular stood out to voters across our qualitative research: “A single acre of solar can power 80 American homes,” a fact one of our focus group participants found “astounding.” These statistics made an impact because they filled important knowledge gaps and were on a scale people can relate to; 80 homes might be about the size of their own rural small town.

Messages can also fail to break through when they are too generic or come from the wrong messenger. For instance, a message about financial benefits to a community fell flat when coming from a politician, but succeeded when coming from a school superintendent detailing specific amounts of tax revenue directed back to his school district from a wind energy project.

Overall, our challenges in engaging rural communities like mine on clean energy are rooted in a need for more information from trusted local messengers. Without it, misinformation and disinformation can easily foster resistance to clean energy.

By bringing rural lived experience and a deep and well-rounded perspective on the full scope of clean energy development’s impact on rural communities, we can connect with people and address their concerns.

The sooner we work with rural residents as partners, not obstacles, the sooner the clean energy transition can accelerate.

Scott Laeser is the Senior Working Lands Advisor at the Rural Climate Partnership and a farmer in Southwest Wisconsin.