Wind alone can’t fix rural America
What wind power won’t do is revitalize rural America, economists said. Though money to landowners goes into the tax base and helps generate local income and economic resilience, it’s unlikely to be transformational, said Brown of the Kansas City Fed.
“I’m not sure that wind power – or any one-off rural development – is going to make a big difference,” he said.
State officials are careful to say that wind energy is just one piece of their economy.
“I’m not sure I would call it a revolution, but in terms of supporting rural Kansas, it is a really important development,” said Randi Tveitaraas Jack, a development manager with the Kansas State Department of Commerce.
There are turbine manufacturing and assembly plants in 42 states, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Onsite and traveling wind technicians, who typically have a two-year degree and earn upward of $50,000 straight out of school, bring solid jobs to rural areas, according to the association.
That can’t make up for decades of rural decline. Wind money isn’t enough to change outcomes, in terms of the durability and stability of rural life, in places such as South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and the like, said Swenson of Iowa State. “It’s great in the short run, and we’re going to welcome it. But in terms of stabilizing rural economies, it’s not even close,” he said.
Keeping families in the farming business
That said, research shows that for farmers who own and farm land with turbines, wind makes a tremendous difference to their long-term plans.
First, they’re more likely to have a succession plan in place on their property, said Sarah Mills, a public policy researcher who looks at land use and energy policy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She wrote her dissertation on what farmers do when they get money from wind turbines.
“What they told me was that the guaranteed income that comes from hosting a turbine was convincing their kids that farming wasn’t such a risky business,” she said.
Her research found that farmers with turbine income invested more in their barns, tractors and other farming operations than neighbors who didn’t.
“The sense was, ‘I can take a loan out now because I know I’m going to be able to pay it off in the future,’ ” she said.
For Tom Cunningham, who’s been farming between Glasco and Concordia, Kansas, for 40 years, the Meridian Way Wind Farm income has made an enormous difference.
Before the wind turbines, things were rough, he recalled. Depending on the national and international economy, some years he broke even, some years he made money and, for more years than he cares to think about, he was on the edge. He had to take a job in town to make ends meet and for a time was what he calls “functionally bankrupt.”
“This isn’t money that other people would think is very much,” he said. “But it made an enormous difference to us.”
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