Harvesting Sunlight: The Rise of Solar Power in Rural America - Scott Aaronson

Hello friends. Welcome to the MToM podcast. I'm Paul Yeager, your host of this program, which comes out each and every Tuesday on all the topics around agriculture and energy and weather. Today we're going to look to the sky and talk solar power - solar panels on farms across the country. What's the resistance? What are the successes and why do we even need these panels? What's the good part about it? We're going to talk to someone who's in the land area, the land acquisition. But it's not a buy. It's usually a lease. We'll get into the discussions. We'll also talk about the two types of solar panels or solar production that there is as of right now, and kind of go over what are some things that are being talked about in rural America when it comes to this issue and why it's important to have these discussions. So we're going to talk with Scott Aaronson. He is the CEO of the Demeter Land Development Company. He is in the area of having conversations with farmers. He sits at that table and he has that talk. We'll go over what he talks about with those producers and some of those land owners. And what are the things he's looking at as we approach? Are we close to getting to peak solar? How are we on the mountain? We're going to talk about that in this installment of the MtoM podcast. 

[Yeager] Scott, I'm intrigued by the pitch to talk to you for a number of reasons. In a lot of Market to Market land, we deal with renewables all the time. I mean, ethanol is still a discussion. Wind power became a big thing in Iowa. Solar seems to be the hot topic of right now. Is that an accurate assessment of the renewable industry right now in agriculture, land?

[Scott Aaronson] Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, what we focus on is, as you know, is distribution level solar. But solar's the new IT thing is, so to speak. And yeah, you know, we're, more busy than we've ever been.

[Yeager] You said a word there that I want to make sure we get. Right. You said distribution. There's two types of solar. Tell me what they are.

[Aaronson] Okay, so. So there's something called utility scale or what they like to refer to is transmission based solar. And then there's and then there's, distribution level solar, which is what, what I focus on. the best way to describe it, transmission based solar. Think of, you know, generally hundreds of acres, sometimes thousands of acres of solar panels connected to the grid through the transmission network. Think of those big, those big transmission lines that you see. And they work like power plants. So, you know, they produce quite a bit of power, significant amount of power. And they transfer it all across the US on large transmission. large transmission lines. Now what I call distribution lines is distribution level solar. And in community solar is a subsection of that is we think of it more like power injections in the distribution, the local grid. So my fields that we generally lease for solar, usually 30 to 50 acres somewhere on that about five megawatts. And they get put directly into the local distribution network. So things exactly where the power is being used. You know, people are drawing off from the same lines. We're putting power right in there. 

[Yeager] Oh, okay. There's a couple of things I need to follow up then on. So what you're saying right now on that end is that more my urban neighborhood that has five of 15 homes with panels on the roof that go into a system, or is that too small of a scale?

[Aaronson] Well, there's a lot of that going on, too. There's a lot of, you know, folks putting stuff on the roofs and putting in rooftop solar and commercial stuff. What I do, though, is, you know, I lease land in, in, in rural America, kind of in areas where the land use, it makes sense for land, which is most of the time agricultural based areas. And I lease, you know, usually it's fields, a solar that's the best place to put them is kind of somewhere in between. You don't want it to be too rural where there's not enough load to take, you know, five megawatts or whatever the megawatts worth of power is. But, you know, in areas where you know you're not going to be putting these in, you know, downtown Chicago or, you know, because, the land use is going to be too expensive for that.

[Yeager] Well, let's use Chicago as an example. Are we talking areas between DeKalb and Chicago is ideal for you, or is it need to be in Aurora? on the western suburbs, which isn't even the western suburbs anymore of Chicago?

[Aaronson] So that my knowledge of the specifics of the Chicago I'm I am not, I'm not I'm not that knowledgeable about that, about that particular area. But let me think of a good Illinois example.

[Yeager] Well, I guess I guess really it's it's more of a we're talking are we talking 20 minutes outside of a town? Are we talking 200 miles outside of a town? When you say 20 minutes or or like the best, like.

[Aaronson] The best place to put them is you have a small town, right. And then we're surrounded by agriculture. And on the agriculture land, you know, right outside the city limits, putting a solar project around there to feed power to the small town. That's kind of like what I see all the time. But it could also be in more rural areas in that, too.

[Yeager] Because if it's in a more rural area, it's, I think you said something about if I understanding of electricity, you lose some of your gains. The longer that energy has to travel.

[Aaronson] Yeah. And more importantly, you know, the idea is that you're, you're putting these the, these distribution level solar stuff in the area where the power is being used. So if you're out in the middle of nowhere and it's just farmland everywhere and there's not, you know, there's no use, there's no, you know, in some instances you can still put them in, but you want kind of the, the mix where it's still agriculture, you know, it's still agricultural value land or, you know, open land. There's still a lot of open land. Doesn't have to be agricultural land. We could get to some sort of, to that topic later, as I'm sure we will. but yeah, yeah, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it needs to be open land essentially.

[Yeager] And type of land is very interesting to me because I get a lot of notes back from people whenever we run a story. about solar. We've done podcasts, about it in the past and it's, there's an up in arms about, oh, you're taking out great farmland for solar. You're ruining the great farmland. Is that an accurate question or statement anymore in this industry?

[Aaronson] Well, I, I understand the sentiment and that's why I even when I talked to you earlier, I was like, oh, God, I'm saying put this on agricultural land. There's going to be some folks, maybe a lot of folks that are upset about it. And a lot of times the question I get is, why are you putting them on? Why don't you just put it on industrial land somewhere? And the truth of the matter is, if you give me a good industrial property, we would love to put it on industrial land. but, you know, you have to do it. You have to kind of balance what the best uses for the specific land that you're doing. So, you know, oftentimes that means that it's farmland and, and, you know, I the question about good farmland is there's a I have a couple of really good answers for you. the first one is that, you know, as you know, you know, agric. And this is the answer that maybe people don't like as much as the other one. But I'll give you both. If you know agriculture, you know, farmers are no or no. you know, farmers. A big part of what farmers do is provide, for energy anyways, you know, as you know, I think there's something like 90 million, 90 million acres of farmland, you know, or of corn based farmland in the US, and 40% of that farmland, I think, goes into ethanol. And that that equates to something like, gosh, I want to say 7 to 10 pounds of corn for every gallon that you use when you fill up your car. so, you know, using taking some of that and you don't need to take that much for taking some of that land from, from corn production to go, you know, using it in a different way for, for, for, for energy production. That's a lot more efficient, I think is a net positive. So that's, I mean, that's one answer that I get, but the truth of the matter is there's also something that could address that concern a little bit more immediately. And that's called agri filters. And essentially what that means is, you know, you still use the land for some sort of agricultural purpose. And, you know, we sign up quite, you know, quite a bit of land not compared to how much land there is, you know, but we sign up quite a bit of land in the space. And on behalf of several different, developers. And now at almost every single one that we sign up now employs some sort of aggregate, whether that's sheep grazing under the panels, you know, now there's talking about vegetable, you know, some sort of vegetable, you know, there's there's there's been the pollinator stuff, you know, bees and all that type of stuff.

[Yeager] We had a case, there's just actually not too terribly far from where I'm sitting right now. Scott. in Ames, Iowa, at Iowa State University, they have a test farm of agro voltaic, and it's with Alliant Energy. And they did an open house. They had somebody from the Department of Energy come and look. And I asked, well, what type of agriculture could be used because it is exactly what you said. It is the vegetables, the sheep, the bees, things like that. I said, well, what about corn? What about cows? They said, right now, at least the way they've set it up there, the cows and big tractors are not going to be able to go. That's going to disrupt some things around the panels. But that's almost kind of like, it sounds like a compromise. Yeah. From everybody. And is that fair? It's a compromise.

[Aaronson] And you know, I've seen tests in AI first of all. Yes. And I agree with that's exactly what we're doing right now, is we're doing that. The stuff that you mentioned, I've seen test test farms where they do have cows, under there, those test farms, generally they need the support, the, the panels and, you know, or they need to support the racking systems in order to because cows will come in, as you guys probably know, cows will come in and rub, rub themselves up and make a whole bunch of math. But, you know, we start with somewhere. And when renewable started, I don't think they were doing any of this. And now they're making it a very, very big part of their mission in order to make everybody happy, to do a lot of agriculture. It's only going to increase from there. And the more that you know, it's only gonna increase from there. And just like anything, there were some big lessons learned in. Yeah, it's it's but it's good to see that the future is, you know, all agri takes and almost everything.

[Yeager] Well, also when you talk about size of land, size of farms, I mean, are we talking two acres, rounded corners or 20 acres, a part of a field. I mean, what's an ideal land development size for some of the things you're talking about. For what we look at, we could do as low as ten acres. However, most folks are going to want around 20 acres in 25 to 25 acres for the stuff, the distribution stuff that we focus on. There's the limits of there's a couple limits. There's limits to the size of the substation and the capacity of what the substation can take and power. And there's often limits on the amount of power that the lines can take. So because of that, you know, we're usually limited to no more than, you know, 30, 40, 50 acres of land. It's a lot. And I, truly believe that utilities, both the transmission based utility scale and distribution are both good. They're both a good use of the land. I truly believe that. But distribution is what we do is a lot easier to stomach in a lot of ways. because, you know, I understand that if you're talking about thousands of acres of land and you know, that's a pretty big footprint, and what we do is, again, on any one line, 30, 40 acres, it's a lot easier of a thing to imagine.

[Yeager] And I would imagine easier to sell in a local community or board of supervisors, county board of supervisors, where you might spend some of your time.

[Aaronson] Sometimes, although there's, you know, a lot of. Yes, yes, it will certainly a lot easier to sell, you know, the smaller that they are sometimes, though, although we've been having a lot of challenges because of a lot of misinformation and, and, you know, it's it's amazing some of that misinformation comes from, you know, exactly who you would expect misinformation, the misinformation, the right people that are competing against renewables, you know, whether that's natural gas facilities or utilities or stuff along those lines. But, yeah, it's been getting a lot more difficult in general to, to, to permit these. And, and, the reasons aren't always, you know, logical or based off of any type of that.

[Yeager] Unfortunately, I was gonna say logical or clear. does it seem like. And what the opposition is, is trying to say.

[Aaronson] Well, sometimes, sometimes it's very clear. but it's also very incorrect. You know, I've heard all sorts of, you know, I've, I've heard everything I've heard, you know, some anytime you have something new or something not even new, something that folks just aren't, are, necessarily familiar with, you know, it's it can be difficult and there's a level of education that we need to give in order to folks in order to, for them to understand exactly what's happening.

[Yeager] Do you find it is certain states or counties or the parts of the country that are more, receiving of your conversation or areas that are more resistant to what you're trying to say?

[Aaronson] No. Surprisingly, no. You know, and it's certainly not everybody. There's a lot of folks that are, you know, a lot of folks that are really into it. A lot of folks that that once they learn and once I'm able to tell them a little bit more about what we're doing and explain how it works and explain agriculture, it's, they love it. You know, and they're very into it. I would say, you know, that, as you could imagine, areas that are dependent on fossil fuels, they tend to sometimes be a little bit more, anti anti solar in, you know, I understand the I understand that they're doing it because they, because they, they have jobs in, in other things. But they oftentimes I hear misinformation that just isn't, isn't really accurate as you know is I'll turn as if the reason that they say that they're not into it.

[Yeager] Well and I'm also hearing, there was a phrase I don't know if was a year ago or two years ago being used called greenwashing. These companies that are traditionally known as fossil fuel companies are buying enough solar renewal built, wind type of facilities or putting enough energy into their company, and they're being labeled as they're just doing that for good PR is do you see that?

[Aaronson] I know, you know, we don't, I'm not partners with any traditional fossil fuel company that's also in renewables. But I have seen some fossil fuel companies, get into that. And while that's not my area of expertise and knowing exactly what they're, they're, motivations are, you know, it wouldn't surprise me.

[Yeager] Are there political environments where when you hear candidates say, I am for renewable energy, does that make your job easier? Or harder?

[Aaronson] I think anything political makes my job harder. You know, anything I say, anything. You know what I mean? If I say something, anything political, if a candidate says that they're pro something at these times and in the folks that that really hate that gain and they're like, well this can this from this must not the must not be a very good idea or or you know, the opposite. You know, you got someone that some people idolize and they say a lot of stuff and, and, you know, it's, it's, you know, yeah.

[Yeager] It's interesting to me and Scott, there's just no other way to put it. Interesting times.

[Aaronson] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, no matter what I say about that, you know, you're going to piss off half the people.

[Yeager] So, welcome to our world. Each and every week when you look at the, the use of, of land for solar and you look at, you're trying to integrate it into a community. What's the best talking point that you have right now of, of trying to marry the use of the land, the need for the electricity and the community that could use what it is that you're talking about.

[Aaronson] Gotcha. Well, a lot of that depends on what type of solar is going in. So I do distribution. There's something called community solar. And community solar is great for most everybody. It's great for the, you know, because it essentially uses subscribers. They get to subscribe for the gardens. And when they subscribe to the garden, they get a discount on their electric bill without having to put any money out. So it's great for everybody. You know, the utility companies will say it's not great for them because they don't want to get discounts on, electric, you know, on people electric, but it's great for everybody else. but the distribution stuff that we do is, is, I mean, it is really is great for the community. I mean, there's, there's the obvious stuff, right? Like the, the, the money that goes to the farmer. Right. And, you know, farming is more difficult than ever. So the idea that that that, you know, a farmer that has, you know, generational farming that, that that's always just barely making it has the ability to make some serious money, like 3 to 5 times what they can make for me.

That's great for them. And, that's life changing to them. so there's like that type of stuff. And then and of course, all of the, you know, the jobs that are created when these projects go in there, like $2 million a megawatt, I think, I don't, you know, I don't know for sure if that's the right amount. But they're, you know, millions and millions of dollars worth of development that's going on in these areas. But it also does, you know, a lot of good for the local community. And that like the local electrical grid is significantly upgraded. So you put in a, one of these, you know, 30 acre, fields, a solar and the, you know, that entire line from the from where that goes into the substation most likely is going to be upgraded. The substation most likely is going to be upgraded. And, you know, it's, if you've ever realized that it's that you never think when you look outside and you're, you're electrical, you know, you never think like, oh, I need upgraded electrical power. But then you get some outages every once in a while, right? And all of a sudden you're like, wow, you know, it really shows you how much you really rely on this type of stuff. 

[Yeager] Are you finding resistance that, infrastructure can't keep up with? the amount of folks willing to put and put their hand up in the air and say, I want 30 acres or 40 acres turned into a solar field.

[Aaronson] Say that one more time.

[Yeager] Well, are you finding out that infrastructure is not able to keep up? Certain areas, like if you've got a cluster of communities that all seem right for this would be a good spot to put solar. Is the infrastructure able to keep up or does everything have to be upgraded? in what you're talking in that scenario you were just talking about?

[Aaronson] Yeah. Well, oftentimes everything has to be upgraded. And there's a you know, it's a lot of that how you know, where we put solar in a lot of ways. What those upgrade costs determine where the solar panels go. So you know, we've seen upgrade costs sometimes that are in the millions of millions of dollars where these projects can't get built. But, you know, there is a certain level of upgrades that have to happen.That has to be done pretty much no matter where you put them. And that's always beneficial.

[Yeager] I know that solar is an issue in the United States, but I also understand in Europe, in the UK, they're having discussions over there. How familiar are you with what's happening there? And is there any comparison?

[Aaronson] I am not that familiar with what's going on in the UK. I know that they're growing like crazy. I know that there's some efforts that are happening, and I think France and or Italy and stuff like that. but, you know, I try to pay attention as much as I can to, to, to, that, what's going on. Yeah, where we are, although you're right, you know, from the little bit that I do know, it's sometimes it's a little bit of a good indication of what's coming down the road in the US. And, you know, in the next couple of years.

[Yeager] Well, land use and land ownership are always, stories that we hear. is this something that you are when you talk about the farmer benefiting from the sale of a, is that, is that a lease or is that a sale? I guess I need to ask which one it is.

[Aaronson] So 90% of what we do are leases, you know, and there's a lot of reasons for it. It's not because we wouldn't want to buy the land, which is it's a, you know, you come and you talk to Centennial Farmer, and the first thing out of your mouth is you're not from there. Or even if you're the first thing out of your mouth, just I want to buy your property. That's fighting words for a lot of folks. Right? And, we get that in, frankly, you know, I like the idea that that, landowners can hold on to their centennial farms if they have, you know, fourth and fifth generation folks, and maybe they have kids that want still to hold on to the farm, but they're not farming it. I have maybe a, you know, maybe a dozen instances on the top of my head of folks where that's the case and they're like, well, I gotta pay the bills. I gotta pay the property taxes. I don't want to lose the farm. This offers them a way to, you know, to have their cake and eat it too.

[Yeager] And how long are these leases that we're talking about?

[Aaronson] So usually it starts with an option agreement. That option agreement is 3 to 5 years. And usually you don't make a ton of money on the option agreement. But the idea with the option agreement is, is, you know, you got you got land. It's been farmland for the last hundred years. It's going to be farmland for the next hundred years. You know, it gives you know, you're not out anything with the option agreement. If a good option agreement should be set up so that so that you make a little bit of money. But you know, pays for crop damage when they come in and it gives the developer some time to be able to see if it's workable because, you know, interconnection in the permitting concerns and all that type of stuff are things that that can't always be discovered until a lot of due diligence and some money goes into it, and it's hard to put money into it before, you know, if you have, you know, before you have site control. So, yeah, so usually 3 to 5 year option agreement. Right. Or option time. and yeah. And then once they're able to develop it, if it's the one that you're able to develop it, usually the periods are 20 start at 25 years pending in the state and can go up to 40 years, 50 years, with, you know, and there's usually a little bit of an increase every year to make up for, for each year. So you make it a little bit more money. every year. Every year.

[Yeager] And how quick are we seeing the technology change in the arrays themselves, that there might be a swap out of one batch for another batch in that same time period that you're referring to?

[Aaronson] Yes. So that's a great question in that in, you know, the panels.

[Yeager] The panels are.

[Aaronson] And, taking the old panels out.

[Yeager] Well. So that's very similar to what we see, at least in Iowa with the wind, energy is the blades get replaced and they're either bigger blades or they're different shaped blades because technology has changed. And you make it sound that that's the same thing there with those arrays.

[Aaronson] And I see, I see now in the wind and this I shouldn't be talking about this because I'm not an expert. I you saw I just saw it. But I see I'm not an expert on and what I'm about to tell you with wind. But I even saw those new bladeless, things which maybe we'll we'll. Yeah, it'll take some of the concerns of.

[Yeager] Well, well, given, I mean, that that change and the changes for you and then we see this discussion about carbon capture and, how does that over the larger renewable energy sector as a whole, is that a good thing when we keep seeing all of these changes and advancements in technology?

[Aaronson] Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to be very clear. You you got to see, you got to see what we used to like the worst of the worst of the worst of renewable energy. The very rudimentary bit of renewable. It's so much cleaner. It's so much better than practically any other type of energy production. Energy production is a dirty, dirty, dirty business. And renewables are incredibly clean. And even they're incredibly clean on their own. And they're even cleaner when you compare them to, like, coal or natural gas or really any other alternative. You know, and it's that's something I got to explain to folks too, because, you know, you can you could say, you know, you could anytime you have any type of development, you build a house, you know, you build a convenience store, you build anything. There's a certain level of concern about about sustainability and building in state, you know, and all that other type of stuff. But if you don't, you know, if you don't compare what, what where are you, where you are and where you came from or what the alternatives are like, you know, it's it's it's hard to see that complete picture. Well, but I'd argue either way with, with most renewables, especially with solar, with especially and especially with solar, which is what I do, it's the clear winner. And it's, you know, significant loss, of that type of stuff than anything else. Of course, you know, you're talking to the solar guys. So of course, like.

[Yeager] It was always going to be. He's got the biggest pompoms for it. So, you talk about, advancements and changes and efficiency, but it's still there's still, you know, certain ethanol gets, criticized because it takes too much water or it takes, a ridiculous amount of land, wind because of sight. what's the biggest pushback you have to do when someone complains to you about solar?

[Aaronson] Oh, man, I, I well, first of all, most of the time when they're complaining, they're complaining on their computer, right? So you know that they're using electricity, right? They're not at least the ones I see. So, so, so the idea that they need electricity, you know, we get that out of the way that you need, you need some sort of electricity generation right now. You look at all the alternatives right now that we know that you need this, you look at the alternatives. And I think to get into this too, because it makes it seem like solar isn't clean on its face if we start talking. But solar really is clean on its face, like there's no there's no toxic chemicals in these panels. There's, you know, nothing leaks. it's clean on its face. But then you compare it to like, well let's look at our other type of generation that we have. Right. You compare it to coal. Oh gosh. You know something like I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think there's something like 500 tons of, of, coal ash and toxic waste just in, in waste. I want to say a day there's hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic. Literally. Think of that. Truckloads. Imagine truckloads driving die with toxic waste every day for your energy, you know, and then there and then there's carbon, you know, the carbon footprint stuff, which is also huge, I think, although, you know. Oh, you got hundreds of thousands of, tons of carbon, you know, carbon being released. You got sulfur, you know, nitrogen oxides and all it mercury and all sorts of nasty, nasty stuff. you know, then so you got so you got coal, you got nuclear, which or we're going to order coal, you got the next big thing is natural gas, right? And that's, you know, has, I think somewhere between 1 and 3% leakage of, of, of stuff. So the amount of it's much better than coal. but you know, it's still, you know, you're leaking natural gas, which, you know, you've seen some of these news articles where I think there was one in Texas recently where, where some car hit, hit one of these pipes and it exploded. And I saw one in Jersey where they took out two blocks of, you know, two blocks of people and, you know, still much better than coal. But we're so we're making progress with natural gas, and there's still a lot of carbon emissions of that type of stuff. And you have nuclear, which is great. I love nuclear, you know, it's still produces nuclear waste, which is a good but generally it doesn't produce any emissions. And, you know, and it produces a whole bunch of power. But you ask yourself, how many nuclear facilities have we produced in the last 30 years? I think the answer is two. Right.

[Yeager] And we're about to put an old one that we took out of commission back in the commission. Yeah. So we're not even building a new there.

[Aaronson] Yeah. And it's still, you know, it's billions and billions of dollars. And if people are upset about solar, if people are upset about about how is it about about solar, imagine how what people think if you put a nuclear facility right next to them, you know, with with a 50 mile evacuation, you know, evacuation zone around that, you know, it's it's, you know, you're going to have.

[Yeager] All that you're going.

[Aaronson] To have a lot worse issues, and you just can't build nuclear fast enough. but you can build solar fast enough. Solar simple. It's a bunch of silicon panels I put in the ground, connect it to the grid, and you're off to the races. You know, it's great.

[Yeager] But what happens when it's cloudy, Scott? I mean, come on, we can't be generating solar. on a cloudy day or at night. I can run that coal at night.

[Aaronson] Yeah. Well, you know, it's there's there's first of all, you know, they put these all over the place, so they put these in the North Pole. They, you know, doesn't need to be cloudy. You know, it doesn't it's not what you think in terms of it's not. You don't have to actually see the sun shining in order to actually get, get to have a sense of efficiency with the panels. And they're making more and more strides towards that. you're right. I think that right now, solar by itself is is not a is not a complete answer to the question. Right. Luckily we have other stuff. We have wind. We have some of these traditional sources of power which we still need for the time being, but it's a start and we're far from the point where we can't we're, we're, we're we're oversaturated with our electrical needs. And there's, there's other things too, that, you know, we could talk about, like batteries and stuff like that, but that's probably that's a whole nother discussion for, for a whole nother probably.

[Yeager] Well, you talk about the energy use, you know, an industrial and I had asked a question with someone on this topic, months ago about, well, why don't you why does it every factory not just put solar panels on top? And then there's an explanation of, well, power companies gave them great deals. It's extremely cheap. We don't need to do that. But then you see these stories about the, the, the, the large data farms that need all the water to keep the servers cool. And then that becomes a strike on those data farms that go in the middle of nowhere in a lot of times, because they don't need they they don't want them in a larger city. So it doesn't matter if you're, creating energy or creating data or putting something in a cloud, there's going to be a complaint about it.

[Aaronson] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

[Yeager] There's no real question there, Scott. I'm just I'm just that's my sermon, according to Paul. I'll just leave it at that. I'm not going to make you answer that one. But, let's wrap up in this direction, peak solar. What does it look like? How soon does that happen? And how do you get there?

[Aaronson] yeah. In terms of the, you know, the best way to get to where we're that's a great question. And I'm not sure I know the specifics about about what peak looks like, but I do know that we're far from it. You know, I'd like to see community solar legislation be enacted in several states, you know, as a way to really push utilities into doing this. Utilities aren't are going to do this without, you know, they they're they're most of the time monopolies. They're not going to do this unless somebody makes them. and, and the only way to make them is the, you know, with a, with a regulated monopolies, they have legislation that says, hey, you have to do this. So I'd like to see more of that legislation come on to, to do it. You know, I'd like to see more folks understand the real, you know, get real information from about what's going on from, you know, renewable energy sources instead of, you know, real scientific studies instead of just instead of just, you know, these misinformation campaigns that we see and, you know, that takes time. But I think we're, you know, the, the, the all the negative side. We're, we're, you know, renewables are increasing every year by huge portions. We're doing a lot of this stuff. And, and, it's exciting to watch is, is, is this takes as a bigger part of our total energy consumption.

[Yeager] It's we're still climbing that mountain and we just don't know where the top is at this point. Is it what I think I'm hearing?

[Aaronson] Yeah, yeah.

[Yeager] But sometimes you're going to hit turbulent weather. it depends on what happens, I guess. I guess I'll stick with the mountain metaphor.

[Aaronson] There you go.

[Yeager] I close it that way. All right. Thank you. Scott, I appreciate the insight here today. Thank you.

[Aaronson] Yeah. No problem. You know, if any of your folks are interested in talking to me about their land, you know, go to the meter dot land. That's my that's, you know, I'll come down. I'll meet with you. you know, I'll shake your hand, I'll walk the land and, we'll do our thing and try to get you a good deal in, also, you know, do some good for your land in the community in the same time.

[Yeager] My thanks to Scott. And thanks to you. Have you signed up for our newsletter? It's available every Monday. I like to call it the 955 minute, 955 minute. It's actually 9:55 a.m.. My notes say it comes out Monday morning at 955. Being a Market Insider newsletter seems pretty simple. Anyway, that's enough for that plug. We'll see you next time on this podcast. Bye bye.

Contact: Paul.Yeager@iowapbs.org