June 10, 2025 • 34 mins
Are rural communities really losing out to solar farms? The data tells a completely different story.
Today on the Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague sits down with Ethan Loomis, Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Strategic Economic Research (SER), to unpack the real economic impact of utility-scale wind, solar, and battery projects on rural America.
What you'll discover in this episode:
The Economic Layer Cake: Ethan breaks down the three levels of economic impact from renewable projects - direct jobs (construction and O&M), indirect benefits (local supply chain), and induced effects (hotels, restaurants, gas stations benefiting from workforce influx).
Mind-Blowing Tax Revenue Numbers: Illinois alone has generated over $483 million in property tax revenue from wind and solar projects since 2003, with McLean County receiving $78 million and school districts seeing $1-2 million annually in additional funding.
The Farmland Myth Busted: Learn why the "paving over the breadbasket" argument doesn't hold water - most projects use less than 1% of county farmland, and solar is 10x more energy-efficient than corn ethanol (which uses 45% of U.S. corn production).
Real-World Case Studies: SER has analyzed over 500 projects across 38 states, providing concrete data on how these projects transform rural economies without significantly impacting agricultural production.
Community Engagement Strategies: Practical advice for developers on navigating NIMBY opposition and building genuine community support through transparent economic analysis.
The Rural Reality Check: Why struggling rural communities with declining populations and automated farming are finding renewable energy projects to be economic lifelines.
đź“… Don't Miss: Learn about SER's annual Illinois Renewable Energy Conference (September 30-October 1 in Normal, IL) with early bird pricing ending June 30th.
Visit strategiceconomic.com to explore their library of publicly available economic impact reports.
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LinkedIn: Ethan Loomis
Website: Strategic Economic Research
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Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/
The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America’s number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ethan Loomis (00:00):
So being able to be compassionate and listening
(00:02):
well and understanding theconcerns and being able to
address those concerns in areasonable way, I think, goes a
long way for building trust withwith people. The more you can
have folks that are local to theproject area come and speak
about the benefits. So gettingthe local county assessor to be
(00:23):
able to look at the economicbenefits, to be able to look at
a third party report like ours,and be able to kind of look
through it, make sure that ournumbers are correct and in line
with what they're seeing and howthey would evaluate it that is
going to go a long way to winlocal trust and support.
intro (00:47):
Are you speeding the energy transition here at the
Clean Power Hour, our host, TimMontague, bring you the best in
solar, batteries and cleantechnologies every week. Want to
go deeper into decarbonization.
We do too. We're here to helpyou understand and command the
commercial, residential andutility, solar, wind and storage
industries. So let's get to ittogether. We can speed the
(01:09):
energy transition
Tim Montague (01:13):
today on the Clean Power Hour the economic benefits
of utility, solar, wind andbattery projects. My guest today
is Ethan Loomis. He is the VicePresident of Marketing and Sales
for Strategic Economic Researchbased here in Illinois. Welcome
to the show, Ethan, thanks Timfor having me. Great to see the
family tradition continuing.
I've had your father and thefounder of ser on the show a
(01:36):
couple of times when the showwas known as the solar podcast,
most recently in 2021 so it'sbeen quite a while, but Ethan,
paint us a picture of how yougot involved in the family
business, and what exactly doesser do?
Ethan Loomis (01:55):
Yeah. So my background is in visual
communication, so I have adegree in journalism from
Illinois State University andworked for a small nonprofit
here in Rockford, Illinois formany years. My start at ser I
came to Strategic EconomicResearch in the middle of the
pandemic in 2020, and Daveapproached me. I was doing the
(02:18):
graphic design for his reportsmaybe four or five a year at
that point in time. And heapproached me and said, I'm
having more and more developerscoming my way, asking for these
economic impact reports. I thinkI need to hire on my first full
time employee. And would youconsider that? So I gave it some
thought and and loved the thenonprofit work that I was doing,
(02:41):
I have a background in photo,video production and managing
websites and how to communicatea good story, well visually. So
learned a lot in that role, butcame to SCR and joined the team
full time, and now we've grownthe company till over 20
employees. We've got people allacross the US that work for us.
(03:04):
So yeah, my father started serback 15 years ago. Just had some
developers come to him askingfor him to examine the economic
impacts of back then, it waspretty much exclusively wind
here in the state of Illinois,and he studied the Green Belt
Express transmission line veryearly on. So with some of those
(03:25):
early projects, it's reallytransition more over to the
solar side and battery storagerecently, but now we've studied
over 500 projects in 38different states, and we've
we've grown our team to over 20people, so it's been great to be
on board with ser and help growthe team.
Tim Montague (03:44):
And we'll put a link in the show notes to your
website, but check out strategiceconomic.com and go to the
library tab, and you'll just seethese are the publicly available
reports they've done many, manyother reports that are not
publicly available becausedevelopers pay them for this
(04:04):
work, and they don't necessarilywant it in the wild. But it is
truly impressive. The number ofstates you've worked in, the
number and types of projects youcovered. You see their solar,
wind transmission and even areport from Lansing, Michigan on
batteries. And there's, ofcourse, many more projects in
(04:27):
the in the in the back catalogthat are not publicly available.
So, super cool. Um, so Ethan,you guys have built a true blue
family business out of thiseconomic research. Tell us a
little more about the businessand what is the scale and scope
of ser
Ethan Loomis (04:46):
Yeah. So we're really focused on partnering
with developers of theseprojects in their community
engagement efforts and alsoduring permitting. Oftentimes,
when you're bringing this thislarge. Surge wind or solar
project into a rural community,there's going to be a lot of
questions that will pop up, anddevelopers are increasingly
(05:08):
experiencing opposition to theseprojects, just levels of concern
from community members relatedto oftentimes, misinformation
that's just get getting spreadonline, and so developers are
having to be on the defensive inso many cases in answering these
questions, our reports allowdevelopers to partner with the
(05:34):
community, to be able to showhere's the economic benefits
that are going to come to youlocally, here's the property tax
revenue that will be felt by thelocal school district, county
fund, township fund, FireDistrict, road district. So
we'll calculate out the propertytax revenue that then feeds into
our economic impact modelshowing the job creation
(05:57):
earnings and economic output,which is essentially the GDP
increase locally. So again, ourreports can be used both on the
community engagement side, at avery early stage in the project,
we can calculate the impacts.
You know, when a developerreally just has the county that
they're interested in, and theymay know the the megawatt
capacity that they would belooking to build, we have enough
(06:19):
industry standard data on ourside to be able to calculate out
what those economic benefits aregoing to be and what the project
costs are going to be. But we dowork directly with developers as
they refine their projectfootprint and have a better idea
of where they're looking tobuild and what the project costs
are going to be. We prefer toget as granular as we can in
(06:42):
that project cost data to wheredevelopers hand off their
project cost to us. We put it inour model. We use in plan, which
stands for impact analysis, forplanning, and then we'll
calculate out those, thoseimpacts to the county.
Tim Montague (06:59):
Yeah, it's kind of a layer cake of economic
benefits. You know, I thinkconsumers think very simply
about these projects, but thereare many layers of impacts. Of
course, there's the preconstruction engineering design
permitting, okay? So there's,there's a company behind every
(07:23):
project that's providing jobs,and then a project goes to
construction. Of course, there'sconstruction labor, which is
significant, and then there aredecades of tax benefits that
flow to various taxing bodies,and I want to break that down
(07:46):
for our listener. So we justneed to as energy professionals,
we need to be savvy when talkingto the public about the benefits
of solar, wind and batteryprojects, because it's not just
installing a piece of hardwareon a piece of ground, and then
(08:07):
you're done. So how do you liketo break this down? Ethan, I
call it the value stack. Butwhat are the what are the big
buckets of economic benefits,and then maybe we can bite into
some details, but let's justfocus on solar and batteries,
(08:29):
because that is my coreaudience. Yeah,
Ethan Loomis (08:32):
absolutely. So the way that we think about it and
the way that the model presentsthe results is breaking it down
into three different layers, thedirect, indirect and induced
impacts. So those direct impactsare really going to be the on
site construction, and then onthe operation side, the
operations and maintenancetechnicians, those folks that
(08:53):
you can see, you know, workingat the project site. So if you
show up to a solar project siteand you see the construction
workforce, those are going to bethose direct impacts, but then
oftentimes what we see isdevelopers communicating those
direct impacts, but they fail toinclude the indirect and induced
impacts as well, and that'swhere our model can really come
(09:15):
in handy for developers. So theindirect impacts are looking at
those supply chain impacts. Sowe look at what materials will
be sourced locally for windprojects. You know, we're
looking at the rebar and cementand any other type of materials
that are used in thosefoundations that would typically
be sourced within the county orvery close by, because the cost
(09:39):
of transporting those goods andmaterials is going to become
exponentially higher as you'relooking outside, outside the
project radius. So on the solarside, again, it's it's materials
for road repairs, it's fencingthat's used to be able to
include in that process. So you.
Um, those are the indirectsupply chain impacts and then
(10:01):
induced impacts would be justincreased local spending when
you're bringing, you know,sometimes four or 500
construction workers into alocal county. What hotels will
benefit? What gas stations, whatgrocery stores, what other local
restaurants and businesses willbenefit as a result of that
construction workforce, and thenthose those technicians for the
(10:23):
life of the project, staying inthe local area. So that's kind
of the value stack that youdescribed, of the job creation.
And then again, the property taxrevenue, you know, for these
projects, especially inIllinois, for the schools,
they're typically receivingabout 60 65% of that property
tax revenue, and so they aregoing to benefit tremendously
(10:48):
from these projects coming intoa rural area.
Tim Montague (10:53):
Yeah, we need to remember that rural areas in the
United States are hurting. Noteverything is hunky dory. The
population is diminishing. Youngpeople are going to the urban
centers. And while farming isstill lucrative, farming cash
(11:14):
crops, let's just think of theMidwest where you know, it's
it's corn and bean farming thatis a lucrative business, but it
is largely automated, and so youdon't need a big workforce to
run that operation, butliterally, farming communities
(11:35):
are struggling and and so cleanenergy projects are somewhat of
a lifeline. They're anadditional source of revenue
that, yeah, you're convertingsome percent of corn and bean
farming. In the case of solar,okay, some acreage, you know, in
(11:55):
Champaign County right now,there is 100 and I think 70
megawatt solar farm being built.
And this county has, you know,640,000 acres and some 15,000 or
no, sorry, 1500 acres are goingto be converted to a solar farm.
(12:16):
I think it's actually only halfof that the project is 1500
acres, and some fraction aregetting converted. But so there
are some trade offs, right? Weare losing some farm ground to
solar. The biggest threat tofarm ground, okay, is urban
sprawl, bar none, by a, I wouldargue, by a factor of 10. You
(12:41):
know, we only need to solarizeone to 2% of the landscape, and
that includes the builtenvironment, the already built
environment. So we're not pavingover the bread basket, but we
are converting some ground toalternative uses, wind, solar,
battery farms. But how does thisplay out in your mind, and if
(13:03):
you were, if you were to explainthis to a lay person today,
okay, farm, ground, traditionalrevenue from that tomorrow,
wind, solar batteries, how doesthis impact a local economy?
Ethan Loomis (13:23):
Yeah, it's an important point that comes up in
these rural communities. We'reseeing a lot of questions raised
around this issue in manypermitting hearings that that we
are a part of, we can do a landuse analysis as part of our
study to be able to look at theacreage that is being taken out
(13:43):
of ag production and being usedfor solar. And typically, this
is more of a an issue on thesolar side, not so much on the
wind side, and that that doesn'ttake up quite as much land. But
as you said, these projects cantake up, you know, 1500 upwards
of 4000 acres, in some cases,for the projects that we're
(14:04):
looking at, we try and look atthe overall land footprint of ag
within the within the county,and so how many acres are being
used currently for agriculture,and typically, the projects that
are being Built are taking upless than than 1% of the entire
farmland in the county. So wetry and paint a big picture of
(14:28):
of this issue. We also need totake into consideration
different perspectives, not onlythe landowners, but also the
tenant farmer, the otherresidents local business over
owners and government bodies. Sowe can do an analysis that'll
(14:49):
show you know again, how will itaffect the landowner? In many
cases, it is kind of a nobrainer decision for the amount
that they are getting for thesole. Land lease, it's going to
far exceed what they would makefor farming. Oftentimes it'll be
three to four times the profitsthat they would get for farming
(15:12):
is what they would be gettingfor the solar land lease. And
then the concern becomes, well,what about the Ag supply chain,
we understand that it'sbeneficial for the landowner
themself, but what about theother local businesses that may
be affected? So we can do aproject by project net economic
(15:35):
analysis to be able to show anypotential losses on the Ag
supply chain side, and kind ofnet out the increases from the
solar and from, you know, we'vebeen doing this for the past few
months, is this net economicimpact analysis, and we've seen
a net benefit still from solarcoming in to a county. And every
(15:59):
situation, every county isdifferent. So again, our model
will look at kind of interindustry spend and how, when you
bring in a capital expenditureinto a local county, what ripple
effects will be felt. So it isquite, quite complicated, but
our model can account for that,the the losses on the Ag side,
(16:20):
and also the gains that you getfrom from the solar side. And
there still is in the cases thatwe've looked at, a net benefit.
So that's that's what we'reseeing. Again, a big issue is a
question that is posedoftentimes is, how are we going
to continue feeding the world ifall of our farmland is taken up
(16:42):
by these solar panels and sothis this issue becomes very
dramatized. Oftentimes, we willmention in those permitting
hearings that about almost halfof corn and soybean production
(17:02):
is already being used for energyin the form of ethanol and
biodiesel, right? So when youare converting kind of that
existing energy usage to tosolar, solar is much more
efficient in terms of of the perunit of energy that's that's
(17:24):
being used.
Tim Montague (17:25):
So by a factor of 10, I think, yeah, there was a
there
Ethan Loomis (17:29):
was a recent study that that came out that was
really interesting on thisissue, from the Proceedings of
the National Academy of thesciences that showed the
efficiency of solar versus cornand soybeans, and it was really,
really compelling. So we arelooking at this issue very
(17:49):
closely. Yields increase about1% annually. So when you're
taking out a certain acreage ofthat farmland from the county,
just due to yields increasing ontrend each year. Typically, we
find that it takes about one totwo years for just yields to
(18:11):
increasing to make up for thatlost acreage in farmland. So we
try and look at all aspects ofthis argument, and be be able to
give a fair and balanced viewacross the board.
Tim Montague (18:25):
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(19:09):
more, I just looked this up inthe US, the the total average of
corn is 45% of the corn crop isused for ethanol. In the
Midwest, that statistic is evenhigher. It's greater than 70% of
(19:30):
our corn acreage is used forethanol, and that industry is
extremely highly subsidized,something like 30% of a corn
farmer's income is subsidies,and that makes the industry
work. All industries requiresubsidies, and we're not alone
(19:51):
in solar, wind and batteries,and that's true of all fossil
fuels and nuclear as well. So.
So if you don't use perplexity,check it out. Perplexity.ai.
They're not a sponsor of theshow. They should be. But I love
that search engine because itgives you sources, right? It's
(20:12):
it's doing, it's scouring theweb and publicly available
reports, and then it actuallyreferences those in the content
that it feeds you, but so it's asuper, super useful tool for
just asking these technicalquestions. So there's, there's
(20:32):
always a trade off, right, wherewe're trading some of existing
farming. You know, corn and beanfarming. Gotta love corn and
bean farming. But you know,farming is also something that
is dynamic. We didn't corn andbean farm forever. It's not, you
know, and we now have propped upthis industry called the ethanol
(20:56):
industry, the biofuels industry,which, at some point is going to
wane. It just is, because it'sit's not very economical. It's
more economical to farm photonsand wind. And it's the physics
of that are not thatcomplicated. When you think
about what you have to do to thecorn to turn it into ethanol.
(21:17):
It's highly, highly energeticthat process, whereas with solar
or wind, right, you're justbuilding a machine, putting it
out there, and it gathers freewind and sunshine for 30 years.
So there are trade offs. Youhave published a very
interesting report, though, onyour website, strategic
(21:38):
economic.com forward slashproperty tax, historic,
historical property tax revenuesfrom wind and solar in Illinois,
key insights. And you know, youcan see, for example, that a
county by county assessment ofhow this has impacted some
(21:59):
counties in Illinois where youhave a lot of wind and solar,
and this includes McLean County,where Bloomington Normal is Lee
County, LaSalle County, BureauCounty and Henry County. But
when you think about this, Ethanpros versus cons economically
(22:20):
for rural communities and theseMidwest farming communities,
what is the net benefiteconomically, from a property
tax perspective, to thosecommunities?
Ethan Loomis (22:36):
Yeah, when you're bringing in a project of this
size, it's going to createenormous benefits on the
property tax side. So as youmentioned, we did a historical
property tax revenue reportlooking at the state of Illinois
for all the wind and solarprojects that have been built in
(22:57):
the state, and we were able tofind that the grand total amount
of property tax revenue that'sbeen generated for the state of
Illinois from these projectsacross all counties is over $483
million and again, a majority ofthat tax revenue is going to the
(23:18):
local school districts. Thething about these projects is
that, as opposed to urbansprawl, as you mentioned, when a
solar project is coming in, it'sincreasing the tax base, but
it's not increasing thepopulation to a great degree. So
you're not needing to use thoseservices to the degree that you
(23:41):
might with urban sprawl. Soyou're bringing in a large
amount of property tax revenueto the schools, to the road
district, to the county fund,township, Fire District,
library, hospitals, butessentially you're not needing
any more out of those services.
And so this is again, a bigbenefit to rural communities
(24:02):
where they may have not have awhole lot going on, and so it
may, in some cases, double theirbudget for the year with a
project of this size, if it's avery small county population
wise. So this is something thatfolks are really interested in.
(24:23):
People want to know what's,what's the slice of the pie that
would kind of translate toeconomic benefits? To me, the
resident locally,
Tim Montague (24:35):
yeah, it, when you really start to look at these
numbers, it you go, wow, this isreally good for rural
communities. $484 million overwhat period of time was this
study done? I don't see that.
Ethan Loomis (24:53):
So we looked at some of the earliest projects
that were were installed. Sothat would have been in 2003
2004 some of those earlyprojects, as you stated, in Lee
and McLean County. And so thoseare the top counties, you know,
looking at table three on pagefour, McLean County alone has
(25:14):
received over $78 million fromwind and solar projects in their
county. And that's because theygot in very early, right? If you
look at the last table, tablefive, you can see McLean County,
their school district, startingto benefit in 2007 so some of
(25:36):
those earliest projects thatwere built, and you're just
stacking that property taxrevenue year over year to create
that cumulative effect. So,yeah, the again, the school
districts are benefiting fromthis property tax revenue the
most oftentimes it can mean anadditional million to $2 million
(26:02):
per year. Yep,
Tim Montague (26:05):
it's real money.
So you know, one of the one ofthe themes I like to lean into
on the show is that we as anindustry need to be better about
communicating the impact ofsolar, wind and batteries to the
public. Farmers don't likechange. They they think, well,
we're paving over the breadbasket. We're converting farm
(26:28):
fields to corn field, I mean, tosolar fields. And now that we
have things like dual use solar,for example, it's a both and
right? You can grow hay, you cangrow pollinator friendly
vegetation. You can graze sheepon solar farms. And, of course,
wind farms is, is, is a verydifferent thing. You can
(26:50):
completely keep doing whatyou're doing on the wind farm,
with the exception of the roadsand the foundations. But I think
I, you know, I want to prop upthe developers who are getting
better at this, and just say tothe industry writ large that we
need to do better. But when youthink about, you know, your work
(27:13):
at ser in terms of of thesepublic hearings on large scale,
wind, solar and batteryprojects. What is working? What
is getting the attention of ofthe not in my backyard,
movement, the nimbyism that goeson, some of it quite nefarious
(27:35):
and funded by dark money. Butwhat do you what is your advice
to developers who are going intothese counties where there's not
necessarily a lot of friendlyfaces?
Ethan Loomis (27:52):
Yeah, well, I think in a lot of these cases,
there can be some some quiteloud voices in the room and some
prominent personalities thatwill voice their concerns, but
that is not the majority ofpeople, and I think it's
important for developers tounderstand that. And you may not
be able to sway the staunchopponents to the project, but
(28:18):
people are listening in thosehearings and local stakeholders
want to take a balanced view andunderstand all perspectives, and
so just being able to keep alevel head and not being brought
into the drama not to getemotional. And it can be
emotional for people. They feelstrongly about where they live
(28:40):
and the type of lifestyle thatis that they have around them,
and so being able to becompassionate and listening well
and understanding their concernsand being able to address those
concerns in a reasonable way, Ithink, goes a long way for
building trust with with people,the More you can have folks that
(29:02):
are local to the project areacome and speak about the
benefits. So getting the localcounty assessor to be able to
look at the economic benefits,to be able to look at a third
party report like ours, and beable to kind of look through it,
make sure that our numbers arecorrect and in line with what
(29:23):
they're seeing and how theywould evaluate it, that is going
to go a long way to win localtrust and support
Tim Montague (29:33):
in our last few minutes together. I do want to
highlight that you host anannual renewable energy
conference in Bloomington,normal. What? What are you
looking forward to about theconference this year, and what
are the dates?
Ethan Loomis (29:48):
Yeah, we're really excited. We're going to be in
Normal, Illinois, September 30and October 1. So a two day
conference. We've done this thepast couple years. So. So this
will be another great year forlearning about renewable energy
in specifically the state ofIllinois. We're expecting about
(30:09):
three to 400 attendees from allareas of the renewable energy
industry. The topics willinclude Illinois legislative
updates, how Illinois isnavigating the federal attitude
towards renewable energy,interconnection issues, hot
topics like battery storage andvirtual power plants. And we've
(30:33):
got some good speakers alreadylined up. They're going to
include Brian granahan from theIllinois Power Agency, JC Kibbe
from the state of he's the stateof Illinois climate advisor, and
then Mark Pruitt from the powerBureau, and we have early bird
pricing going on. That ends June30, so about a month from now,
(30:55):
you can get registered atIllinois renewable.com
renewable.com got the Yep, we'llput the URL, but we'll
Tim Montague (31:07):
put the website Illinois renewable.com in the
show notes as well. Anythingelse before we go Ethan that you
want our listeners to know aboutser or what's going on in
renewables in Illinois? Yeah,
Ethan Loomis (31:21):
if you're a developer of renewable energy
projects, we would love to beable to provide an economic
impact study for your project.
Again, we've done over 500projects in 38 states, so we've
got a good team here, goodamount of experience and
expertise in the energyindustry. So thanks for the time
on your show, Tim. I listen alot to what you have, who you're
(31:43):
interviewing, and it's a greatshow. So I appreciate having me
on
Tim Montague (31:50):
well. Thank you. I really appreciate what what ser
does, and I look forward toseeing you guys at the
conference in at the end ofSeptember, and hopefully in at
some of the other shows that aregoing on coming up here, we have
Midwest solar Expo. We've got replus Midwest, and we got the
solar farm Summit. You can findthat information about all of
(32:13):
those events at clean powerhour.com go to the events tab.
And with that, I'll say thankyou so much to Ethan Loomis, of
Strategic Economic Research forcoming on the show today. How
can our listeners find you?
Ethan,
Ethan Loomis (32:27):
yeah, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so you can
just search for my name. EthanLoomis, l, o, M, i, s, would
love to connect there and tryand try and update what's going
on with me and the company. Sohappy to connect on LinkedIn.
Great
Tim Montague (32:41):
with that, I will say, let's grow solar and
storage. Thanks so much. You.
So being able to be compassionate and listening
(00:02):
well and understanding theconcerns and being able to
address those concerns in areasonable way, I think, goes a
long way for building trust withwith people. The more you can
have folks that are local to theproject area come and speak
about the benefits. So gettingthe local county assessor to be
(00:23):
able to look at the economicbenefits, to be able to look at
a third party report like ours,and be able to kind of look
through it, make sure that ournumbers are correct and in line
with what they're seeing and howthey would evaluate it that is
going to go a long way to winlocal trust and support.
intro (00:47):
Are you speeding the energy transition here at the
Clean Power Hour, our host, TimMontague, bring you the best in
solar, batteries and cleantechnologies every week. Want to
go deeper into decarbonization.
We do too. We're here to helpyou understand and command the
commercial, residential andutility, solar, wind and storage
industries. So let's get to ittogether. We can speed the
(01:09):
energy transition
Tim Montague (01:13):
today on the Clean Power Hour the economic benefits
of utility, solar, wind andbattery projects. My guest today
is Ethan Loomis. He is the VicePresident of Marketing and Sales
for Strategic Economic Researchbased here in Illinois. Welcome
to the show, Ethan, thanks Timfor having me. Great to see the
family tradition continuing.
I've had your father and thefounder of ser on the show a
(01:36):
couple of times when the showwas known as the solar podcast,
most recently in 2021 so it'sbeen quite a while, but Ethan,
paint us a picture of how yougot involved in the family
business, and what exactly doesser do?
Ethan Loomis (01:55):
Yeah. So my background is in visual
communication, so I have adegree in journalism from
Illinois State University andworked for a small nonprofit
here in Rockford, Illinois formany years. My start at ser I
came to Strategic EconomicResearch in the middle of the
pandemic in 2020, and Daveapproached me. I was doing the
(02:18):
graphic design for his reportsmaybe four or five a year at
that point in time. And heapproached me and said, I'm
having more and more developerscoming my way, asking for these
economic impact reports. I thinkI need to hire on my first full
time employee. And would youconsider that? So I gave it some
thought and and loved the thenonprofit work that I was doing,
(02:41):
I have a background in photo,video production and managing
websites and how to communicatea good story, well visually. So
learned a lot in that role, butcame to SCR and joined the team
full time, and now we've grownthe company till over 20
employees. We've got people allacross the US that work for us.
(03:04):
So yeah, my father started serback 15 years ago. Just had some
developers come to him askingfor him to examine the economic
impacts of back then, it waspretty much exclusively wind
here in the state of Illinois,and he studied the Green Belt
Express transmission line veryearly on. So with some of those
(03:25):
early projects, it's reallytransition more over to the
solar side and battery storagerecently, but now we've studied
over 500 projects in 38different states, and we've
we've grown our team to over 20people, so it's been great to be
on board with ser and help growthe team.
Tim Montague (03:44):
And we'll put a link in the show notes to your
website, but check out strategiceconomic.com and go to the
library tab, and you'll just seethese are the publicly available
reports they've done many, manyother reports that are not
publicly available becausedevelopers pay them for this
(04:04):
work, and they don't necessarilywant it in the wild. But it is
truly impressive. The number ofstates you've worked in, the
number and types of projects youcovered. You see their solar,
wind transmission and even areport from Lansing, Michigan on
batteries. And there's, ofcourse, many more projects in
(04:27):
the in the in the back catalogthat are not publicly available.
So, super cool. Um, so Ethan,you guys have built a true blue
family business out of thiseconomic research. Tell us a
little more about the businessand what is the scale and scope
of ser
Ethan Loomis (04:46):
Yeah. So we're really focused on partnering
with developers of theseprojects in their community
engagement efforts and alsoduring permitting. Oftentimes,
when you're bringing this thislarge. Surge wind or solar
project into a rural community,there's going to be a lot of
questions that will pop up, anddevelopers are increasingly
(05:08):
experiencing opposition to theseprojects, just levels of concern
from community members relatedto oftentimes, misinformation
that's just get getting spreadonline, and so developers are
having to be on the defensive inso many cases in answering these
questions, our reports allowdevelopers to partner with the
(05:34):
community, to be able to showhere's the economic benefits
that are going to come to youlocally, here's the property tax
revenue that will be felt by thelocal school district, county
fund, township fund, FireDistrict, road district. So
we'll calculate out the propertytax revenue that then feeds into
our economic impact modelshowing the job creation
(05:57):
earnings and economic output,which is essentially the GDP
increase locally. So again, ourreports can be used both on the
community engagement side, at avery early stage in the project,
we can calculate the impacts.
You know, when a developerreally just has the county that
they're interested in, and theymay know the the megawatt
capacity that they would belooking to build, we have enough
(06:19):
industry standard data on ourside to be able to calculate out
what those economic benefits aregoing to be and what the project
costs are going to be. But we dowork directly with developers as
they refine their projectfootprint and have a better idea
of where they're looking tobuild and what the project costs
are going to be. We prefer toget as granular as we can in
(06:42):
that project cost data to wheredevelopers hand off their
project cost to us. We put it inour model. We use in plan, which
stands for impact analysis, forplanning, and then we'll
calculate out those, thoseimpacts to the county.
Tim Montague (06:59):
Yeah, it's kind of a layer cake of economic
benefits. You know, I thinkconsumers think very simply
about these projects, but thereare many layers of impacts. Of
course, there's the preconstruction engineering design
permitting, okay? So there's,there's a company behind every
(07:23):
project that's providing jobs,and then a project goes to
construction. Of course, there'sconstruction labor, which is
significant, and then there aredecades of tax benefits that
flow to various taxing bodies,and I want to break that down
(07:46):
for our listener. So we justneed to as energy professionals,
we need to be savvy when talkingto the public about the benefits
of solar, wind and batteryprojects, because it's not just
installing a piece of hardwareon a piece of ground, and then
(08:07):
you're done. So how do you liketo break this down? Ethan, I
call it the value stack. Butwhat are the what are the big
buckets of economic benefits,and then maybe we can bite into
some details, but let's justfocus on solar and batteries,
(08:29):
because that is my coreaudience. Yeah,
Ethan Loomis (08:32):
absolutely. So the way that we think about it and
the way that the model presentsthe results is breaking it down
into three different layers, thedirect, indirect and induced
impacts. So those direct impactsare really going to be the on
site construction, and then onthe operation side, the
operations and maintenancetechnicians, those folks that
(08:53):
you can see, you know, workingat the project site. So if you
show up to a solar project siteand you see the construction
workforce, those are going to bethose direct impacts, but then
oftentimes what we see isdevelopers communicating those
direct impacts, but they fail toinclude the indirect and induced
impacts as well, and that'swhere our model can really come
(09:15):
in handy for developers. So theindirect impacts are looking at
those supply chain impacts. Sowe look at what materials will
be sourced locally for windprojects. You know, we're
looking at the rebar and cementand any other type of materials
that are used in thosefoundations that would typically
be sourced within the county orvery close by, because the cost
(09:39):
of transporting those goods andmaterials is going to become
exponentially higher as you'relooking outside, outside the
project radius. So on the solarside, again, it's it's materials
for road repairs, it's fencingthat's used to be able to
include in that process. So you.
Um, those are the indirectsupply chain impacts and then
(10:01):
induced impacts would be justincreased local spending when
you're bringing, you know,sometimes four or 500
construction workers into alocal county. What hotels will
benefit? What gas stations, whatgrocery stores, what other local
restaurants and businesses willbenefit as a result of that
construction workforce, and thenthose those technicians for the
(10:23):
life of the project, staying inthe local area. So that's kind
of the value stack that youdescribed, of the job creation.
And then again, the property taxrevenue, you know, for these
projects, especially inIllinois, for the schools,
they're typically receivingabout 60 65% of that property
tax revenue, and so they aregoing to benefit tremendously
(10:48):
from these projects coming intoa rural area.
Tim Montague (10:53):
Yeah, we need to remember that rural areas in the
United States are hurting. Noteverything is hunky dory. The
population is diminishing. Youngpeople are going to the urban
centers. And while farming isstill lucrative, farming cash
(11:14):
crops, let's just think of theMidwest where you know, it's
it's corn and bean farming thatis a lucrative business, but it
is largely automated, and so youdon't need a big workforce to
run that operation, butliterally, farming communities
(11:35):
are struggling and and so cleanenergy projects are somewhat of
a lifeline. They're anadditional source of revenue
that, yeah, you're convertingsome percent of corn and bean
farming. In the case of solar,okay, some acreage, you know, in
(11:55):
Champaign County right now,there is 100 and I think 70
megawatt solar farm being built.
And this county has, you know,640,000 acres and some 15,000 or
no, sorry, 1500 acres are goingto be converted to a solar farm.
(12:16):
I think it's actually only halfof that the project is 1500
acres, and some fraction aregetting converted. But so there
are some trade offs, right? Weare losing some farm ground to
solar. The biggest threat tofarm ground, okay, is urban
sprawl, bar none, by a, I wouldargue, by a factor of 10. You
(12:41):
know, we only need to solarizeone to 2% of the landscape, and
that includes the builtenvironment, the already built
environment. So we're not pavingover the bread basket, but we
are converting some ground toalternative uses, wind, solar,
battery farms. But how does thisplay out in your mind, and if
(13:03):
you were, if you were to explainthis to a lay person today,
okay, farm, ground, traditionalrevenue from that tomorrow,
wind, solar batteries, how doesthis impact a local economy?
Ethan Loomis (13:23):
Yeah, it's an important point that comes up in
these rural communities. We'reseeing a lot of questions raised
around this issue in manypermitting hearings that that we
are a part of, we can do a landuse analysis as part of our
study to be able to look at theacreage that is being taken out
(13:43):
of ag production and being usedfor solar. And typically, this
is more of a an issue on thesolar side, not so much on the
wind side, and that that doesn'ttake up quite as much land. But
as you said, these projects cantake up, you know, 1500 upwards
of 4000 acres, in some cases,for the projects that we're
(14:04):
looking at, we try and look atthe overall land footprint of ag
within the within the county,and so how many acres are being
used currently for agriculture,and typically, the projects that
are being Built are taking upless than than 1% of the entire
farmland in the county. So wetry and paint a big picture of
(14:28):
of this issue. We also need totake into consideration
different perspectives, not onlythe landowners, but also the
tenant farmer, the otherresidents local business over
owners and government bodies. Sowe can do an analysis that'll
(14:49):
show you know again, how will itaffect the landowner? In many
cases, it is kind of a nobrainer decision for the amount
that they are getting for thesole. Land lease, it's going to
far exceed what they would makefor farming. Oftentimes it'll be
three to four times the profitsthat they would get for farming
(15:12):
is what they would be gettingfor the solar land lease. And
then the concern becomes, well,what about the Ag supply chain,
we understand that it'sbeneficial for the landowner
themself, but what about theother local businesses that may
be affected? So we can do aproject by project net economic
(15:35):
analysis to be able to show anypotential losses on the Ag
supply chain side, and kind ofnet out the increases from the
solar and from, you know, we'vebeen doing this for the past few
months, is this net economicimpact analysis, and we've seen
a net benefit still from solarcoming in to a county. And every
(15:59):
situation, every county isdifferent. So again, our model
will look at kind of interindustry spend and how, when you
bring in a capital expenditureinto a local county, what ripple
effects will be felt. So it isquite, quite complicated, but
our model can account for that,the the losses on the Ag side,
(16:20):
and also the gains that you getfrom from the solar side. And
there still is in the cases thatwe've looked at, a net benefit.
So that's that's what we'reseeing. Again, a big issue is a
question that is posedoftentimes is, how are we going
to continue feeding the world ifall of our farmland is taken up
(16:42):
by these solar panels and sothis this issue becomes very
dramatized. Oftentimes, we willmention in those permitting
hearings that about almost halfof corn and soybean production
(17:02):
is already being used for energyin the form of ethanol and
biodiesel, right? So when youare converting kind of that
existing energy usage to tosolar, solar is much more
efficient in terms of of the perunit of energy that's that's
(17:24):
being used.
Tim Montague (17:25):
So by a factor of 10, I think, yeah, there was a
there
Ethan Loomis (17:29):
was a recent study that that came out that was
really interesting on thisissue, from the Proceedings of
the National Academy of thesciences that showed the
efficiency of solar versus cornand soybeans, and it was really,
really compelling. So we arelooking at this issue very
(17:49):
closely. Yields increase about1% annually. So when you're
taking out a certain acreage ofthat farmland from the county,
just due to yields increasing ontrend each year. Typically, we
find that it takes about one totwo years for just yields to
(18:11):
increasing to make up for thatlost acreage in farmland. So we
try and look at all aspects ofthis argument, and be be able to
give a fair and balanced viewacross the board.
Tim Montague (18:25):
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(19:09):
more, I just looked this up inthe US, the the total average of
corn is 45% of the corn crop isused for ethanol. In the
Midwest, that statistic is evenhigher. It's greater than 70% of
(19:30):
our corn acreage is used forethanol, and that industry is
extremely highly subsidized,something like 30% of a corn
farmer's income is subsidies,and that makes the industry
work. All industries requiresubsidies, and we're not alone
(19:51):
in solar, wind and batteries,and that's true of all fossil
fuels and nuclear as well. So.
So if you don't use perplexity,check it out. Perplexity.ai.
They're not a sponsor of theshow. They should be. But I love
that search engine because itgives you sources, right? It's
(20:12):
it's doing, it's scouring theweb and publicly available
reports, and then it actuallyreferences those in the content
that it feeds you, but so it's asuper, super useful tool for
just asking these technicalquestions. So there's, there's
(20:32):
always a trade off, right, wherewe're trading some of existing
farming. You know, corn and beanfarming. Gotta love corn and
bean farming. But you know,farming is also something that
is dynamic. We didn't corn andbean farm forever. It's not, you
know, and we now have propped upthis industry called the ethanol
(20:56):
industry, the biofuels industry,which, at some point is going to
wane. It just is, because it'sit's not very economical. It's
more economical to farm photonsand wind. And it's the physics
of that are not thatcomplicated. When you think
about what you have to do to thecorn to turn it into ethanol.
(21:17):
It's highly, highly energeticthat process, whereas with solar
or wind, right, you're justbuilding a machine, putting it
out there, and it gathers freewind and sunshine for 30 years.
So there are trade offs. Youhave published a very
interesting report, though, onyour website, strategic
(21:38):
economic.com forward slashproperty tax, historic,
historical property tax revenuesfrom wind and solar in Illinois,
key insights. And you know, youcan see, for example, that a
county by county assessment ofhow this has impacted some
(21:59):
counties in Illinois where youhave a lot of wind and solar,
and this includes McLean County,where Bloomington Normal is Lee
County, LaSalle County, BureauCounty and Henry County. But
when you think about this, Ethanpros versus cons economically
(22:20):
for rural communities and theseMidwest farming communities,
what is the net benefiteconomically, from a property
tax perspective, to thosecommunities?
Ethan Loomis (22:36):
Yeah, when you're bringing in a project of this
size, it's going to createenormous benefits on the
property tax side. So as youmentioned, we did a historical
property tax revenue reportlooking at the state of Illinois
for all the wind and solarprojects that have been built in
(22:57):
the state, and we were able tofind that the grand total amount
of property tax revenue that'sbeen generated for the state of
Illinois from these projectsacross all counties is over $483
million and again, a majority ofthat tax revenue is going to the
(23:18):
local school districts. Thething about these projects is
that, as opposed to urbansprawl, as you mentioned, when a
solar project is coming in, it'sincreasing the tax base, but
it's not increasing thepopulation to a great degree. So
you're not needing to use thoseservices to the degree that you
(23:41):
might with urban sprawl. Soyou're bringing in a large
amount of property tax revenueto the schools, to the road
district, to the county fund,township, Fire District,
library, hospitals, butessentially you're not needing
any more out of those services.
And so this is again, a bigbenefit to rural communities
(24:02):
where they may have not have awhole lot going on, and so it
may, in some cases, double theirbudget for the year with a
project of this size, if it's avery small county population
wise. So this is something thatfolks are really interested in.
(24:23):
People want to know what's,what's the slice of the pie that
would kind of translate toeconomic benefits? To me, the
resident locally,
Tim Montague (24:35):
yeah, it, when you really start to look at these
numbers, it you go, wow, this isreally good for rural
communities. $484 million overwhat period of time was this
study done? I don't see that.
Ethan Loomis (24:53):
So we looked at some of the earliest projects
that were were installed. Sothat would have been in 2003
2004 some of those earlyprojects, as you stated, in Lee
and McLean County. And so thoseare the top counties, you know,
looking at table three on pagefour, McLean County alone has
(25:14):
received over $78 million fromwind and solar projects in their
county. And that's because theygot in very early, right? If you
look at the last table, tablefive, you can see McLean County,
their school district, startingto benefit in 2007 so some of
(25:36):
those earliest projects thatwere built, and you're just
stacking that property taxrevenue year over year to create
that cumulative effect. So,yeah, the again, the school
districts are benefiting fromthis property tax revenue the
most oftentimes it can mean anadditional million to $2 million
(26:02):
per year. Yep,
Tim Montague (26:05):
it's real money.
So you know, one of the one ofthe themes I like to lean into
on the show is that we as anindustry need to be better about
communicating the impact ofsolar, wind and batteries to the
public. Farmers don't likechange. They they think, well,
we're paving over the breadbasket. We're converting farm
(26:28):
fields to corn field, I mean, tosolar fields. And now that we
have things like dual use solar,for example, it's a both and
right? You can grow hay, you cangrow pollinator friendly
vegetation. You can graze sheepon solar farms. And, of course,
wind farms is, is, is a verydifferent thing. You can
(26:50):
completely keep doing whatyou're doing on the wind farm,
with the exception of the roadsand the foundations. But I think
I, you know, I want to prop upthe developers who are getting
better at this, and just say tothe industry writ large that we
need to do better. But when youthink about, you know, your work
(27:13):
at ser in terms of of thesepublic hearings on large scale,
wind, solar and batteryprojects. What is working? What
is getting the attention of ofthe not in my backyard,
movement, the nimbyism that goeson, some of it quite nefarious
(27:35):
and funded by dark money. Butwhat do you what is your advice
to developers who are going intothese counties where there's not
necessarily a lot of friendlyfaces?
Ethan Loomis (27:52):
Yeah, well, I think in a lot of these cases,
there can be some some quiteloud voices in the room and some
prominent personalities thatwill voice their concerns, but
that is not the majority ofpeople, and I think it's
important for developers tounderstand that. And you may not
be able to sway the staunchopponents to the project, but
(28:18):
people are listening in thosehearings and local stakeholders
want to take a balanced view andunderstand all perspectives, and
so just being able to keep alevel head and not being brought
into the drama not to getemotional. And it can be
emotional for people. They feelstrongly about where they live
(28:40):
and the type of lifestyle thatis that they have around them,
and so being able to becompassionate and listening well
and understanding their concernsand being able to address those
concerns in a reasonable way, Ithink, goes a long way for
building trust with with people,the More you can have folks that
(29:02):
are local to the project areacome and speak about the
benefits. So getting the localcounty assessor to be able to
look at the economic benefits,to be able to look at a third
party report like ours, and beable to kind of look through it,
make sure that our numbers arecorrect and in line with what
(29:23):
they're seeing and how theywould evaluate it, that is going
to go a long way to win localtrust and support
Tim Montague (29:33):
in our last few minutes together. I do want to
highlight that you host anannual renewable energy
conference in Bloomington,normal. What? What are you
looking forward to about theconference this year, and what
are the dates?
Ethan Loomis (29:48):
Yeah, we're really excited. We're going to be in
Normal, Illinois, September 30and October 1. So a two day
conference. We've done this thepast couple years. So. So this
will be another great year forlearning about renewable energy
in specifically the state ofIllinois. We're expecting about
(30:09):
three to 400 attendees from allareas of the renewable energy
industry. The topics willinclude Illinois legislative
updates, how Illinois isnavigating the federal attitude
towards renewable energy,interconnection issues, hot
topics like battery storage andvirtual power plants. And we've
(30:33):
got some good speakers alreadylined up. They're going to
include Brian granahan from theIllinois Power Agency, JC Kibbe
from the state of he's the stateof Illinois climate advisor, and
then Mark Pruitt from the powerBureau, and we have early bird
pricing going on. That ends June30, so about a month from now,
(30:55):
you can get registered atIllinois renewable.com
renewable.com got the Yep, we'llput the URL, but we'll
Tim Montague (31:07):
put the website Illinois renewable.com in the
show notes as well. Anythingelse before we go Ethan that you
want our listeners to know aboutser or what's going on in
renewables in Illinois? Yeah,
Ethan Loomis (31:21):
if you're a developer of renewable energy
projects, we would love to beable to provide an economic
impact study for your project.
Again, we've done over 500projects in 38 states, so we've
got a good team here, goodamount of experience and
expertise in the energyindustry. So thanks for the time
on your show, Tim. I listen alot to what you have, who you're
(31:43):
interviewing, and it's a greatshow. So I appreciate having me
on
Tim Montague (31:50):
well. Thank you. I really appreciate what what ser
does, and I look forward toseeing you guys at the
conference in at the end ofSeptember, and hopefully in at
some of the other shows that aregoing on coming up here, we have
Midwest solar Expo. We've got replus Midwest, and we got the
solar farm Summit. You can findthat information about all of
(32:13):
those events at clean powerhour.com go to the events tab.
And with that, I'll say thankyou so much to Ethan Loomis, of
Strategic Economic Research forcoming on the show today. How
can our listeners find you?
Ethan,
Ethan Loomis (32:27):
yeah, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so you can
just search for my name. EthanLoomis, l, o, M, i, s, would
love to connect there and tryand try and update what's going
on with me and the company. Sohappy to connect on LinkedIn.
Great
Tim Montague (32:41):
with that, I will say, let's grow solar and
storage. Thanks so much. You.
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