This piece from TWW’s Greg Brophy originally ran in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel and can be accessed here.
Mesa County can learn from counties that have embraced renewables
Feb 4, 2024
As Mesa County draws up new solar regulations, other rural communities offer lessons in the impact of wind and solar projects
Rural communities in Colorado have seen a surge of renewable energy investment in recent years. The falling cost of wind and solar technologies has made them attractive for individual landowners who want to take control of their own energy usage, not to mention independent power producers who want to develop larger solar arrays to sell electricity into the grid.
In Mesa County, local officials have seen a significant increase in permitting requests for solar, and last month, this prompted the county commission to approve a six-month moratorium on any project approvals.
As a former state legislator who fought on the front lines of Colorado’s oil and gas political wars, I have to admit, moratoriums make me nervous. But in this case, I believe that the Mesa County Commission is headed down the right path.
Taking a brief pause to study the lessons learned from other rural communities with significant renewable energy investment is a wise move. Landowners, project developers and all other stakeholders will benefit from a cohesive strategy and clear ground rules for the expansion of solar power in Mesa County.
Between now and the expiration of the moratorium in July, county commissioners and interested citizens may wish to examine the lessons learned from the Eastern Plains, where I’m from.
Around 15 years ago, our rural communities became very attractive destinations for renewable energy investment. The plains being what they are, most of the investment was wind, of course, but we did see a significant number of solar projects too.
Let’s be frank: The idea of our pro-oil and gas, politically conservative communities embracing wind and solar seemed strange at first. But in time, it actually made a whole lot of sense.
The conservative approach to energy policy, in my humble opinion, is “all of the above.” And on the Eastern Plains, we got to see how that works on a local level.
Adding wind farms and solar arrays didn’t mean taking away oil and gas. Quite simply, it just grew our economy and created another way for farmers and ranchers to make their land even more productive and profitable.
We also found that the wider community benefited in a number of ways.
During the construction phase, we saw a significant bump in construction jobs and associated spending, which helped boost local businesses and increased sales tax revenues for cities and towns.
Then, over the longer term, our communities also saw a boost in property tax revenues as a result of the capital investment that went into these projects and the value of the electricity they continue to generate.
In the words of one county commissioner from the Eastern Plains, these renewable energy projects “generate a lot of property tax revenue, which helps school districts, fire districts, county government, city government and other local services in our community.”
A few years ago, I started working with a conservative non-profit that looks for pro-market energy solutions, especially in rural communities. We commissioned a study on how renewable energy investments had strengthened the economy of Eastern Colorado, in partnership with regional development organizations Action 22 from Southern Colorado and Progressive 15 from Northeast Colorado.
Overall, the report found a long-term economic boost of $5.9 billion from wind farms, solar arrays and energy storage projects. Again, this wasn’t substituting for oil and gas, agriculture and other existing industries – it was added on top of them.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that billions of dollars of solar energy investment is about to come rushing into Mesa County and surrounding communities. For the Eastern Plains, this was a 15-year to 20-year process.
But this much is undeniable: Our corner of the state is much better off because of this investment, and we’d love to see other parts of Colorado enjoy the same success.
Greg Brophy is a former state senator and a fourth-generation corn and melon farmer from Yuma County. He is the Colorado director of The Western Way.