Limiting solar in rural Iowa is a bad idea
- Brian Krambeer is the president and CEO of MiEnergy Cooperative, which serves 20,000 members in northeast Iowa and southeast Minnesota.
- Andy Johnson is the manager director of Clear Power Districts of Iowa, which serves 10 Iowa county-level Clear Power Districts that cowl practically a 3rd of Iowa’s inhabitants.
In Iowa’s 2022 legislative session, Senate File 2321 proposes to severely restrict the siting of utility-scale photo voltaic farms by banning photo voltaic from acres with above-average corn suitability.
The difficulty is predicted to be a top-line power debate once more within the Statehouse, as it’s for a lot of county supervisors across the state. Listed below are key the explanation why Iowa’s elected leaders ought to keep away from knee-jerk photo voltaic in rural Iowa, the place it is wanted most.
Freedom of the day
Farmers and landowners in Iowa take property rights and freedom to make use of land significantly. There are limitations after all, resembling the necessity for public roads or energy traces, however farmers are largely free to handle their land as they see match. We urge lawmakers to observe that long-standing method.
This autonomy loved by Iowa property homeowners contains actively farming the land, leasing the land, or managing it for makes use of resembling conservation, wildlife, or recreation. The state can’t inform a farmer that they need to handle for deer as a result of they’re positioned in an space with a excessive deer inhabitants, any greater than they will inform a farmer that they need to plant corn, or not. quickly set up photo voltaic panels, as a result of their land has a excessive corn suitability ranking.
Some say, wait, we have to shield Iowa’s best land for rising meals. However the Iowa Corn Growers Affiliation says 57% of Iowa-grown corn goes to ethanol manufacturing. That represents over 7 million acres of prime energy-producing farmland.
Lower than 1% of ethanol corn acres could be wanted to supply as a lot photo voltaic power as Iowa’s present wind energy (about 12 gigawatts) and meet all of Iowa’s electrical energy wants. If making automobile gas from corn fields is nice for Iowa, certainly powering our properties and companies and vehicles and vehicles from photo voltaic panel farms can be good for Iowa.
Photo voltaic’s suitability ranking is excessive, and the door to photo voltaic ought to stay open as an possibility for landowners, on practically each Iowa acre.
However wait, others say: Photo voltaic is taking the land out of everybody’s annual manufacturing acres. Not precisely. We’re more and more studying tips on how to combine crops, livestock grazing, photo voltaic panels, and conservation inside fields and multi-functional agricultural landscapes. As well as, Iowa farmers have enrolled 1.7 million acres of cropland within the revered Conservation Reserve Program (which additionally takes cropland out of manufacturing) – 10 occasions greater than photo voltaic. And like CRP land, on the finish of the life cycle of the photo voltaic panels, the land that’s rested and stuffed can extra simply be returned to agriculture for product manufacturing than it might for a shopping center or information heart improvement.
Iowa landowners ought to have the liberty to farm within the solar with photo voltaic panels, when and the place they select.
Progress of the day
Prosperity is one other severe matter all through rural Iowa, one which requires arduous work and willpower at each flip.
Our organizations, rural electrical cooperatives and clear power districts, work arduous to advertise native wealth creation, jobs, and financial improvement, by way of distributed power methods. -locally owned and operated. Photo voltaic in any respect scales, particularly co-op utility scales, is an actual photo voltaic improvement alternative in each Iowa county.
We talked about above the 12 gigawatts of photo voltaic wanted to match the quantity of wind we now have within the state (and photo voltaic and wind work effectively collectively on the grid). That potential determine would symbolize $15 billion invested, 50,000 jobs created, and upwards of $40 billion over 25 years in returns to utilities, landowners, and native and state governments.
This chance is additional enhanced by main new federal incentives obtainable to rural electrical cooperatives, municipal electrical utilities, and native governments. If we do not make the most of these alternatives, our neighbors definitely will, and why would we need to be future tenants of renewable power producers in different states once we will be landlords right here at dwelling?
The chance for photo voltaic improvement is actual for each county in Iowa. Elected leaders ought to suppose arduous earlier than doing something to shut the spigot on Iowa’s rural wealth creation simply as it’s starting to open.
Power of the solar
The photo voltaic independence and prosperity mentioned above will make our rural communities stronger for generations to return. Iowa’s elected management on the county and state stage ought to keep away from imposing onerous new limits and laws on utility scale photo voltaic siting in Iowa. Whereas a lot consideration has been positioned on eminent area processes for different power infrastructures, to this point, no photo voltaic set up in Iowa has been achieved involuntarily.
Iowa is nice for commodities and photo voltaic; let the landowner resolve who they need to develop.
Brian Krambeer is the president and CEO of MiEnergy Cooperative, which serves 20,000 members in northeast Iowa and southeast Minnesota. Andy Johnson is the manager director of Clear Power Districts of Iowa, which serves 10 Iowa county-level Clear Power Districts that cowl practically a 3rd of Iowa’s inhabitants.
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