Missouri is at the center of energy production and the debates over how it’s done. Electricity is often made in rural or agrarian areas and then much of it needs to be transported to urban areas or larger population centers.

“We’re kind of caught in the crossroads of that with both the benefits and costs that come along with that,” said Michael Sykuta, an economist and soon-to-be director of the new Center for Rural Energy Security — a University of Missouri research initiative that will examine the economic and social impact of energy infrastructure on rural places.

The center’s scholars aim to provide information and context to the often controversial topics of developing renewable energy, power plants and transmission lines in rural communities.

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“One thing that Missouri can offer that most other places can’t is a policy-oriented research institute that really takes into consideration what the implications of energy policy are for rural communities, the agricultural communities, the Midwest broadly,” Sykuta said.

Sykuta said there’s not much information about how energy infrastructure — power lines, wind turbines, solar panels, coal or nuclear plants — affect the communities in which it is generated. Therefore, policymakers are short on details when analyzing the economic, environmental, health and cultural impacts of a project.

Energy demand in the U.S. is expected to continue to grow, driven by the electrification of homes and cars and especially by the development of AI data centers — server farms that require a significant amount of electricity.

“There’s a large amount of infrastructure that has to be built and most of that ends up crossing rural communities, which impacts farmers, impacts residents, impacts the economies of local communities,” Sykuta said. “And quite frankly, despite all of the work that is done, there’s not a lot of work actually examining systematically what the consequences of these investments are.”

The initial financial support for the forthcoming Center for Rural Energy Security comes from the Missouri Farm Bureau, whose membership is made up of agriculture producers across the state.

“We’re not only producers of energy, but we are significant users of energy, and everything we touch is tied to energy,” said Garrett Hawkins, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau.

Hawkins has been bureau president for four years and said the idea for the Center for Rural Energy Security was born after a discussion with MU President Mun Choi.

“It really spawned from conversations with university leadership about the challenges that farmers, ranchers and landowners face as we see the greatest transition of power generation and transmission that we have seen, really, since electrification of rural America,” he said.

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In recent years, building large-scale solar, wind or transmission line projects that cut through rural communities has been controversial. Some residents express concern about the infrastructure’s impact on wildlife and the landscape. Hawkins and other farmers often question the impact of transitioning large numbers of acres of land from agriculture to energy production.

“What’s exciting is, for the first time ever, there’s going to be a think tank here in the country that’s going to be focused on the issues that we face in rural America,” he said.

The Missouri Farm Bureau is particularly concerned about what energy infrastructure means for property rights. The bureau has been involved in lobbying for change to Missouri’s eminent domain laws, which allow governments to acquire private property from landowners for developments deemed in the public’s interest.

The bureau has also gone before Missouri’s Public Service Commission, which oversees utilities, to challenge the Grain Belt Express, a multi-state electrical transmission line that would carry wind power made in Kansas through Missouri and on to Illinois and Indiana.

Hawkins said there is a “void” of information on the topic of eminent domain as it relates to energy developments.

“How do you put a price tag on a piece of property that’s being taken via eminent domain for a transmission project … a piece of property that the landowner does not wish to sell,” he said.

Hawkins said research on the impact of energy development in rural communities is all the more essential as the industry transitions from primarily fossil fuel sources to renewable generation.

“Those of us in the heartland and private property owners or farmers and landowners all across the country are being asked to, yet again, to bear the brunt of housing infrastructure,” he said.

Funding concerns

However, the bureau’s involvement in the research initiative has raised red flags for some renewable energy proponents. James Owen, director of Renew Missouri, a clean energy advocacy group, is concerned the support from the agriculture organization could cloud the center’s findings.

“Everything about this suggests that it is designed to be something that’s going to be critical of clean energy, and nothing about it is suggesting that it’s going to be objective,” he said.

After the Missouri Farm Bureau announced its financial support for the center, Owen wrote a letter to Choi calling the Missouri Farm Bureau’s claim that renewable energy projects take productive farmland and benefit only urban areas “misleading and factually incorrect.”

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Owen wrote about the economic benefits that individual property owners and rural municipalities can cash in on by hosting renewable power plants and urged Choi to “reconsider this partnership.” He has not yet received a response.

A significant part of the Missouri Farm Bureau’s work is political. The organization lobbies for legislation at both the state and federal levels. Owen asserts a lot of that lobbying has been anti-clean energy.

Missouri Farm Bureau’s website notes a priority to “strip eminent domain authority for solar and wind energy projects.” The organization also asks the state Public Service Commission to “deny authorization to exercise eminent domain power for any transmission line proposed by private, out-of-state entities that do not serve Missouri customers.”

“We just want to make sure that if the University of Missouri is doing something, they’re maintaining a sense of objectivity,” Owen said. “That they’re not just going to be parroting a bunch of talking points by a special interest group.”

Owen points to a variety of benefits for rural communities that host energy projects, such as increased local government revenue and additional income for landowners who lease property to developers.

“There are a lot of farmers in the state who have found that their income has been diversified because of clean energy opportunities,” he said.

Benefits, he said, the Missouri Farm Bureau tends to overlook. Owen hopes researchers will include those aspects in their work.

“To say that, like, ‘Oh, nobody from rural Missouri is benefiting from clean energy’ I think that is a grand bit of misinformation,” he said.

Providing context, avoiding bias

MU Center for Rural Energy Security’s researchers plan to study topics that overlap with Missouri Farm Bureau priorities, such as eminent domain policies. The center’s leaders are also seeking financial support from other organizations.

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Michael Sykuta, director of the forthcoming center, has been an economist at MU for almost 30 years, studying topics related to what the Center for Rural Energy Security will pursue.

For instance, a current project is analyzing what utility-scale wind and solar — installments that take up large amounts of space and primarily contribute power to the grid, as opposed to an individual’s home — mean for the local economy where it is located.

Researchers are collecting data on every large-scale wind and solar project in the country and looking into economic factors of the host community.

“What was the county’s economic engine looking like before? How did county-level GDP change? How did the composition of that GDP change?” Sykuta said. “Does it add value to the county economy or does it not?”

There also will be analysis done regarding how energy infrastructure and agriculture industries interact.

“There’s lots of different elements to how these installations might affect agricultural communities, agricultural land, agricultural production that haven’t been all brought together in one place,” Sykuta said.

Sykuta said the politics and conflicts around energy in rural communities concern him.

“I don’t like controversy, and I don’t like being in the middle of the arguments and I don’t intend to be,” he said. “Our goal is to produce research based on sound scientific principles.”

Sykuta said “every policy has winners and losers.” For example, a farmer could be concerned about one element of an energy development that benefits another resident.

“It’s difficult to make these policies in an informed way if we don’t really understand what the consequences are, and that’s where the need for the research really is,” he said.

Sykuta said the Center for Rural Energy Security’s work will be peer-reviewed and held to the scientific standards.

“Anytime you have sponsored research, you have the concern about biased research,” he said. “I am committed to making sure that isn’t the case,” he said.

Sykuta is currently assembling a team of researchers and hiring staff. This week, plans for the center will be delivered to the university provost for formal approval. Sykuta anticipates studies to begin in the next few months.

This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian.

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