Renewable energy and jobs up in rural areas

While an ambitious “Green New Deal” to convert the country to 100-percent renewable energy by 2030 is discussed in Washington, the rural Midwest is already heading that way, according to a new report verified by area experts. Renewable energy is growing, says “Green Energy Sweeps across Rural America,” an 18-page study from the Natural Resources Defense Council, with support from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. The report shows how wind, solar and other energy-efficiency efforts are dominating the rural economy, growing jobs and investment.Such green-energy sources outnumber coal, gas and oil, combined, says the study, using 2017 data from the Dept. of Energy. In Illinois, for example, the percentage of fossil-fuel jobs fell to 0.8 percent of all jobs; clean-energy jobs grew to 2.6 percent.
“Clean energy plays an outsize role in rural areas relative to the size of rural economies,” say the report’s chief authors, Arjun Krishnaswami and Elisheva Mittelman. “In 2017, more people in the rural Midwest were employed by clean energy than by fossil fuel power plants, extraction, refinement and transportation combined in 10 of 12 midwestern states.