President’s announcement Thursday is just one piece of a big clean energy picture
By Erik Gunn, Wisconsin Examiner.
Excerpt: On Thursday afternoon, President Joe Biden stood in front of a solar panel array on the grounds of Vernon Electric Cooperative in Vernon County to announce $7.3 billion that will go to expand clean power sources for rural electric co-ops across the country. It was ...just a slice of what has been a major economic priority for Biden since he took office in January 2021: pushing the U.S. toward more clean and renewable sources of energy. Provisions in two of the Biden administration’s signature pieces of legislation have sought to address climate change on several fronts, but with an emphasis on hastening the country’s conversion to solar, wind and other forms of power that advocates hope can supplant the fossil fuels blamed for accelerating climate change. ...Biden’s announcement Thursday focused on just one clean energy avenue — power generation in rural America. Wisconsin-based Dairyland Power Cooperative will receive $573 million, a grant combined with a loan, to increase its supply of solar and wind power. The co-op will combine those funds with private investment for the $2.1 billion project. Dairyland is one of 16 rural energy co-ops serving 23 states that will participate in the $7.3 billion Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program operated through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The White House has compared the effort to bring renewable power to places like western Wisconsin to the federal rural electrification program that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted in the 1930s....