President Biden commits $573 million for renewable energy in rural Wisconsin, possible growth in cities too | WUWM 89.7 FM

Supporters of a new half-billion-dollar federal funding package for a rural electric cooperative in Wisconsin say the entire state will benefit. President Joe Biden announced the funding Sept. 5 near LaCrosse, Wis.

Biden says the nonprofit Dairyland Power Cooperative will receive $573 million in grants and loans to help finance the $2 billion project. The LaCrosse-based utility promises to acquire more than 1,000 megawatts of renewable energy from four solar farms and four wind farms in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. Dairyland will also build energy storage units to help distribute electricity when needed.

The public money comes from the Inflation Reduction Act and is part of $7 billion in funding for 16 U.S. rural cooperatives the White House just announced as part of its Empowering Rural America program.

During a visit to Dairyland partner Vernon Electric Co-op in Westby, Biden said it is the largest expansion of rural electrification since President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.

“Before the New Deal, private utilities refused to provide electricity to rural communities. As a result, one in 10 rural households — only one in 10 — had electricity before FDR came to power. So farmers had to organize electric cooperatives to distribute electricity to their families and communities. But cooperatives are still nonprofit. They don’t have the same resources that private utilities have to modernize their energy infrastructure,” Biden said.

But now Biden says co-ops can take advantage of clean energy tax credits.

Jeremy Fisher of the Sierra Club says the program should lead to significant reductions in air pollution, which would benefit both rural and urban areas.

“Rural electric cooperatives have actually been some of the slowest to transition away from high-priced fossil fuels. And a lot of that is because they have outstanding debt from coal and gas plants. But also because they haven’t had access to clean energy. So this program really addresses two elements—both of them allow for new investment in clean energy and help pay down debt,” Fisher says.

Dairyland Power president and CEO Brent Ridge says the renewable energy projects will help the utility reduce its carbon emissions by 70% and deliver electricity to 240,000 homes, translating into a 42% saving on members’ electricity bills over ten years.

Solar and wind farms have faced criticism for using land that could otherwise support crops. But Ridge says that as deals are negotiated with farmers or smaller energy companies, any losses can be reduced.

“One of our main goals is to look for land that otherwise wouldn’t be as productive. And then we try to improve the land that we have control over. And that’s a revenue stream for a lot of farmers who otherwise would have lost their farm or not passed it on,” Ridge says.

Darin Von Ruden, an organic dairy farmer from Vernon County who runs the Wisconsin Farmers Union, which represents 2,200 family farms, says there are ways to avoid crop losses.

“In southwestern Wisconsin, with our hillsides, there’s a lot of grazing, and you can put solar systems in to graze almost any animal. It might be a little more expensive to put dairy or beef cattle in the system. But certainly any ruminant animal could graze under solar systems almost anywhere in the world,” Von Ruden says.

Von Ruden says another location factor will be how close the solar and wind farms are to existing power lines. He says some of the energy generated in rural areas will flow into urban areas.

“This is reality. When I travel around Minnesota and South Dakota/North Dakota, all the wind turbines, all that energy is going to Wisconsin and Illinois. That’s part of the process and where the (electricity) grid is,” he says.

But von Ruden says rural areas like his will get their fair share of electricity from this major renewable energy expansion — announced in a battleground state two months before Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris tries to beat Republican Donald Trump and succeed Biden in the White House.

The Wisconsin Republican Party says President Biden’s return to Wisconsin was the “return route no one wanted.” The GOP statement did not address the half-billion in aid for a major utility or the thousands of construction jobs Dairyland said it would create.