Category: Inflation_Act_2022_Food_Agriculture NEBRASKA_CN NEWS_ARCHIVE PATA_Inflation_Reduction_Act_2022_Related

Last week, my family’s ranch — which we have owned for five generations — and the home my grandfather built were utterly destroyed in a wildfire that claimed two other homes and more than 15,000 acres of rangeland. Fueled by climate-change-induced drought, heat and wind, the blaze spread fast and hot. It was just like the fires in California you see on the news, but in the unlikely setting of Nebraska cattle country.

The Southwest Power Pool (SPP) territory is located right in the center of the continental U.S. and is home to some of the strongest average wind speeds in the country. This, combined with generally flat, sparsely populated land has made the SPP a region of focus for wind developers despite the broad lack of aggressive state renewable policy. The SPP ranks fourth among the U.S. regions designated in our wind investment outlook in the U.S., with over 29 GW of operating wind capacity. The financial outlook for wind in the SPP is among the most favorable in the country, boding well for the planned 16 GW of wind capacity in the pipeline in the SPP.

Lincoln student Alex Hamric pleaded with Nebraska lawmakers to, at a minimum, recognize the impacts of climate change, but the 14-year-old was doubtful that his words would hold any weight.

Located in Wayne County, Nebraska, Haystack Wind utilizes existing interconnection infrastructure in Southwest Power Pool (SPP) North from Ørsted’s 230 MW onshore wind farm Plum Creek Wind, located nearby. Between the two projects, Ørsted has now invested over half a billion dollars in the state of Nebraska.

From the polar vortex to wildfires and flooding, Nebraska residents got another taste in 2021 of the potent consequences of the state’s naturally extreme weather in a climate-changed world.
Indeed, the year was bookended by firsts: February brought the state’s first rolling blackouts as a result of record cold, and December brought that month’s first derecho anywhere in the nation and Nebraska’s first tornado swarm in the final month of the year.

Nebraska turned more than a few heads recently when public officials there adopted net-zero carbon goals across the electricity sector. After all, clean energy has often been framed as a partisan issue, and solidly Republican Nebraska looks nothing like most of the other states that have staked out timelines for clean power, such as New York, California and Washington State.

As of the end of 2021, 31 states and the District of Columbia had renewable portfolio standards (RPS) or clean energy standards (CES). These polices require electricity suppliers to supply a set share of their electricity from designated renewable resources or carbon-free eligible technologies. Four states — Delaware, Oregon, North Carolina, and Illinois — updated their RPS or CES policies in 2021. In addition, Nebraska approved its first clean energy goal in December 2021, becoming the 20th U.S. state to commit to 100% clean electricity by 2050.

The question, according to Martha Shulski, Nebraska’s state climatologist, isn’t whether climate change caused the wild weather on Wednesday.
Rather, Shulski said the question is: “How much worse was it made by climate change?”

Nebraska is a reliably red state. The last time Nebraskans backed a Democrat in a presidential election was 1964. Former president Donald Trump won the state in 2016 by a double-digit margin. So it’s no surprise that Nebraska, like 15 other Republican-controlled states, does not have a plan in place to tackle climate change — its conservative lawmakers have blocked efforts to create such a plan. But, unlike other states, Nebraska has other elected officials capable of making progress on reducing emissions.

The Acting Nebraska State Director for USDA Rural Development Kim Martini announced on Tuesday that $3 million worth of department funds will be awarded to the state.
“These funds will help local communities better prepare for extreme weather, combat climate change, and give back to their communities at large,” said Martini.