Rural county governments are key to shaping the economic, social and environmental future of their communities, including managing the impacts of large-scale renewable energy projects such as wind farms. However, many rural counties face serious challenges — limited staff, strained budgets and shifting laws that reduce their authority — leaving them with few resources to navigate negotiations with well-resourced wind energy developers.
A new study, led by Salma Elmallah of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), with co-authors Robi Nilson, Joseph Rand, Emma Uridge (Kansas Health Institute) and Ben Hoen, examines how these challenges affect rural counties’ ability to participate in and benefit from wind energy development.
The study, published in the Journal of Rural Studies, investigates how rural county capacity, including staffing, expertise and fiscal health, shapes their involvement in planning and negotiations and the outcomes for their communities. Drawing on a survey of 262 elected officials in eight U.S. states, including Kansas, the authors explored how local officials perceive wind energy, how they engage with developers and how uneven resources create inequities between counties. Uneven rural capacity deepens the imbalance of power between local governments and developers, making it harder for rural communities to secure meaningful benefits.
The study found that counties with stronger fiscal health and more full-time staff, such as attorneys, engineers and planners, were more likely to negotiate over key issues like turbine layout, transmission line siting and even community ownership. In contrast, under-resourced and less populated counties often lacked access to this expertise and relied heavily on developers for information and guidance, despite mistrust of developers’ intentions and practices.
The authors conclude that strengthening rural capacity, through investment in staffing, expertise and technical support, is critical to ensuring that wind energy development is equitable and beneficial for the rural communities that host these projects. Stronger capacity can help address community concerns, reduce conflict and allow rural governments to advocate more effectively for their residents’ needs.