Nebraska-based organizer and activist Jane Kleeb believes rural America is where the nation’s green energy future will be built. She just wants to make sure that rural Americans are engaged, compensated, and celebrated during this massive infrastructure transition.
“Rural people shoulder the responsibility on a relatively small piece of land to feed the entire world,” she said. “They can also power the world on that same land. That can be a tremendous source of pride. How do we create a cultural sense of pride powering the world with clean energy?”
Kleeb came to prominence in environmental circles by leading opposition to oil pipelines, specifically starting the progressive Bold Nebraska advocacy group in 2010 that would help organize ranchers, farmers, and Native Americans to oppose the Keystone XL Pipeline. The work led to her winning a Climate Breakthrough Award in 2023, which comes with a $3 million grant to fund further advocacy.
Now, as part of a new vision for Bold Nebraska, Kleeb wants to become an advocate for rural communities to expand renewable power production and demand better community benefits from developers and power companies. This summer and fall, Kleeb and her group will begin organizing across the rural portions of a number of states—Nebraska, North Dakota, Illinois, and Arizona—to help boost renewable generation. Bold is currently hiring staff and will begin working on projects later this year, aiming for a $2 million annual budget, provided by Kleeb’s Climate Breakthrough prize and money from sources such as the Wallace Foundation, Patagonia, and the Equation Campaign.
All four states are home to growing renewable power sectors that haven’t reached their potential. Nebraska, which ranks in the top five states for wind potential and top 15 for solar, already gets 35% of its power from renewables. Arizona, which has been hampered by turbulent state energy regulations, could grow its solar potential as much as 150% in the next five years. North Dakota’s wind sector, which doubled between 2015 and 2021, has room to grow, and its solar market, which is basically nonexistent, could add more than 600 megawatts in five years.
Kleeb sees her mission, in part, as rectifying an imbalance in political investment and information (or misinformation). Often, the investments being made by environmental groups focus on blue states—or blue cities in red states—as opposed to the vast swath of rural land where wind and solar power is best suited. Climate activists and environmental groups often misunderstand and even disdain rural Americans, Kleeb said. Their valid concerns get dismissed instead of answered.
That leaves an information gap. Factor in the vast partisan divide, which pits rural, often Republican voters against renewable power, and it further leaves those regions vulnerable to misinformation and propaganda. Pew Research found rural Americans are now more skeptical about renewable power than the average voter, and currently about 15% of U.S. counties have bans or moratoriums on new renewable development.
Kleeb herself remembers sitting in a county board meeting in Nebraska, hearing community members fight against data centers and wind power. That’s when it clicked that there needs to be a different way of promoting clean energy that respects rural communities and provides wider benefits.
“Why are we leaving behind the communities that are going to be shouldering the build-out for the next 100 years? We focused on the messaging of 100% clean energy by 2030, and there’s no substance to it,” Kleeb said.
Bold will hire three advisers to help Kleeb on the national team, as well as a full-time staffer in each of the four states who will organize with unions, climate groups, agriculture, and industry, and focus on three to five projects each. Kleeb wants her group to be a trusted third party that helps rural communities not just see the benefits of renewables but reap them as well. Bold will not accept money from green groups; it wants to stay neutral and play the role of convener and advocate.
When developers of renewables come to rural communities seeking to strike deals and build utility-scale wind and solar projects, Bold staffers will work with and organize community groups, seeking to create a united front and fight for a community benefit agreement. These deals can include dividends for locals that provide significant benefits for hosting renewable power sites, and counteract a growing perception that the benefits of renewable power are either oversold or underwhelming.
A fair deal, Kleeb sketched out, might involve getting developers to pay $250,000 to $500,000 annually in community benefit agreements that can fund local nonprofits or childcare centers, and an additional $250,000 to $500,000 in dividend payments to residents within 3 miles of a large-scale renewable installation. Bold has signed similar deals in the past. Earlier this year, it pushed the developers of the Tallgrass Pipeline, which will transport carbon dioxide as part of a carbon storage scheme, to sign a community benefit agreement that pledged $600,000 to train first responders in the impacted communities, $500,000 for local nonprofits along the route, and yearly royalty checks for neighboring landowners.
Clean energy developers often believe that via land payments, tax revenue, and the larger social good of providing clean energy, they’re already doing a good thing, Kleeb said. She argues that rural citizens should see more direct benefits, which in turn would make clean energy much more politically popular in the areas where it’s most efficient.
“We really do believe that if there’s more money in people’s pockets and they feel like they have a personal stake in it, more pride will be there,” she said. “In oil communities, you see the oil rig become a literal mascot. I hope that 10 years down the road, our small towns are so proud of wind and solar and the role they play that it becomes embedded in rural culture.”