- 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 almost 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 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 severely. There are limitations after all, corresponding to 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 comply with that long-standing method.
This autonomy loved by Iowa property homeowners consists of actively farming the land, leasing the land, or managing it for makes use of corresponding to conservation, wildlife, or recreation. The state can’t inform a farmer that they need to handle for deer as a result of they’re situated in an space with a excessive deer inhabitants, any greater than they’ll 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 compatibility score.
Some say, wait, we have to shield Iowa’s most efficient 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 the ethanol corn acreage is required to provide 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 automotive gas from corn fields is sweet for Iowa, certainly powering our houses and companies and automobiles and vans from photo voltaic panel farms can also be good for Iowa.
Photo voltaic’s affordability score is excessive, and the door to photo voltaic ought to stay open as an choice for landowners, on almost each acre in Iowa.
However wait, others say: Photo voltaic is taking the land out of everybody’s annual manufacturing acres. Completely not. We’re more and more studying easy methods 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 instances 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 agricultural commodity manufacturing than it could to a shopping center or information heart growth.
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 critical matter all through rural Iowa, one which requires exhausting work and willpower at each flip.
Our organizations, rural electrical cooperatives and clear power districts, work exhausting to advertise native wealth creation, jobs, and financial growth, by means of distributed power methods. -locally owned and operated. Photo voltaic in any respect scales, particularly co-op utility scales, is an actual photo voltaic growth alternative in each Iowa county.
We talked about above the 12 gigawatts of photo voltaic wanted to match the quantity of wind now we have within the state (and photo voltaic and wind work properly collectively on the grid). That potential determine would characterize $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 out there to rural electrical cooperatives, municipal electrical utilities, and native governments. If we do not benefit from these alternatives, our neighbors actually will, and why would we need to be future tenants of renewable power producers in different states after we could be landlords right here at residence?
The chance for photo voltaic growth is actual for each county in Iowa. Elected leaders ought to suppose exhausting earlier than doing something to shut the spigot on Iowa’s rural wealth creation simply because it’s beginning to open.
Energy of the solar
The photo voltaic independence and prosperity mentioned above will make our rural communities stronger for generations to come back. Iowa’s elected management at each the county and state ranges ought to keep away from imposing burdensome new limits and rules on utility-scale photo voltaic installations in Iowa. Whereas a lot consideration has been positioned on eminent area processes for different power infrastructure, till now, no photo voltaic set up in Iowa has been completed with no volunteer.
Iowa is sweet for commodities and photo voltaic; let the landowner determine 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 almost a 3rd of Iowa’s inhabitants.
