Optimizing Land Use for Nebraska's Clean Energy Transition
Nebraskans care about family farms, clean energy, and wildlife conservation. There’s a future where we can balance it all, together.
There’s no place like Nebraska. From our one-house legislature, to our unique system of locally-controlled, tax-funded, watershed-based conservation, to our statewide commitment to customer-owned public power, Nebraska is an innovator of environmental policy like no other.
A wide majority of rural voters across party lines have supported a gradual transition to 100% renewable energy. Governed by elected boards of directors, Nebraska’s publicly-owned utilities (Omaha Public Power District, Lincoln Electric System, and Nebraska Public Power District) have all pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050 .
With passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure and Investment in Jobs and Inflation Reduction Act, the state is set for rapid change. Wind and solar projects in Nebraska’s rural economy could generate over $1.4 billion of revenue in this decade. Nebraskans are wondering: How will this change our farms, ranches and unique landscape?
Energy & Conservation
At The Nature Conservancy, we don’t have a crystal ball, but we do talk to farmers, meteorologists, university scientists, and independent researchers. This is what we know: as the climate warms, Nebraska can create clean energy jobs and keep farms family-owned without disrupting our most ecologically sensitive lands.
Nebraska’s Sandhills are the largest intact grasslands in the world, thanks in large part to the stewardship of generations of ranchers. Half of our agricultural lands are grazing lands. Indeed, in a state such as Nebraska, where over 97% of our land is in private ownership, conservation often starts and stops with the landowner.
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At Jack’s Solar Gardens, over 3,200 solar panels create a 1.2 MW community solar garden – enough to power over 300 homes. This non-profit partners with farms and research institutes to study agrivoltaics, the practice of co-locating solar panels with agriculture.
Agrivoltaics show us renewable energy can be sited on marginal or non-productive farmland without disruption to our intact grasslands.
Co-locating pollinator-friendly vegetation with solar installations can improve soil quality and aid nearby farms with crop pollination and pest control.
Wind and solar farming already offer a way to diversify operations and profit from marginal farmland—whether farmers are investing in themselves or leasing their land to others.
Solar power generation may be more expensive to generate than wind in Nebraska, but has a much smaller impact on critical ecosystems.
Our analysis has shown that there is abundant low impact capacity to generate solar energy throughout Nebraska, which could mean big money for Nebraska farms.
Whether a producer sets aside two dryland acres for 25 megawatts of solar or decides to co-locate agriculture production and solar, the price is already right.
For a hypothetical 1,000-acre corn/soybean rotation farm in Phelps county, using just 15 acres for an Agrivoltaics system can save $35,000 in irrigation fuel, $25,000 in equipment fuel and generate $38,000 in additional electricity sales income for farmers per year by mid-century.
Climate & Crop Production
Conservation isn’t the only consideration driving landowner decisions in Nebraska. Our state's agricultural sector makes up for $1 out of every $4 of economic production in the state, Nebraskans know we need to plan for a changing planet to protect our economic future. That is why we assessed the expected temperature and precipitation changes by mid-century, and the implications for Nebraska agriculture.
Temperatures throughout Nebraska in 2050 will be significantly warmer, with already hot southern counties seeing the largest increase in extreme heat. Growing season (May-November) temperatures in Nebraska are presently between 62° - 73° Fahrenheit, but that will likely rise to 69° - 77° by mid-century.
Click the menu button in the bottom left to view the map legend. Drag the slider in the middle to compare 2020 average temperatures (on the left), and 2050 projected temperatures (on the right).
As Nebraska summers get hotter and drier on average, the future will also bring an increase in extremes beyond anything in recent memory. As temperatures rise around thirty six degrees Fahrenheit throughout the state, precipitation during the growing season is expected to decline.
These changes will have a significant impact on the production of corn and soybeans by mid-century. More evapotranspiration--the process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and by transpiration from plants--will result in greater need for irrigation as declining precipitation fails to meet crop water needs from the atmosphere. We measure this effect with the Crop Water Index (CWI), which represents the difference between evapotranspiration and precipitation.
In 2020, growing season precipitation ranged from 14 to 19.5 inches.
By 2050, average precipitation will decrease 1-2 inches, ranging from 13 - 18 throughout the state.
Central Nebraska will see the greatest drop in average precipitation between 2020 and 2050, with many counties seeing declines close to 5%.
Coupled with hotter temperatures, the drop in precipitation will lead to more evapotranspiration of key crops like corn.
By mid-Century, Nebraskan farmers will need to rely more on irrigation, with Eastern counties seeing up to 44% increase in the Crop Water Index by 2050.
Our analysis has also shown similar trends for other crops such as soybeans.
As well as crops that are important for livestock, such as hay.
Optimizing Land Use for Clean Energy
Expert analysis has shown us that hotter, drier summers will present serious challenges to Nebraska's agricultural sector. But at the same time, there is both ample room for solar and wind projects on already fragmented or marginal lands and overwhelming public support for a gradual clean energy transition. This means Nebraska farmers have the opportunity to capitalize on a forthcoming clean energy boom, while protecting their financial wellbeing and their cherished grassland ecosystems.
This map overlays total renewable low impact capacity with the counties expected to experience the greatest burden from climate change with respect to the corn crop.
Four-in-five Midwestern rural voters say we can produce clean energy and preserve natural areas, wildlife habitat, and community character. While there is a concern at the prospect of losing farmland to renewable energy, farmers are the most trusted resource on renewable energy projects. In fact, 91% of Midwestern rural voters are more likely to say that farmers and landowners should have the final say about the use of their land. Because of this bipartisan consensus as well as its unique, innovative landscape, Nebraska is well positioned to produce 100% of its energy from clean, renewable sources in the next fifteen years.
Child brushes snow off solar panels. © Oliver Rudkin
