RANDOLPH COUNTY, Indiana ‒ When more than 650 children descended on the local 4-H fair last summer to show livestock and exhibit projects, the grounds looked a little grander than in years past.
Youngsters wearing cowboy boots and oversized belt buckles led heifers and steers around a shiny, new show area. Families scooched past neighbors, friends and cows to find accessible, air-conditioned bathrooms. Teens dished out nachos and sugary elephant ears to hungry fairgoers in a brand-new kitchen, even as the 65-year-old milkshake machine still rumbled against a far wall.
Residents of this county on Indiana’s eastern border have been showing swine, sheep and cattle on this site since the 1950s. But the fairgrounds had wilted under the weight of so many feet and hooves.
Now, it has a new life, thanks to a $2.8 million renovation largely funded by a renewable energy company that operates wind and solar farms here and across the country. 
Renewable energy money has changed more than just the fairgrounds; it has transformed this economically stalled county from corner to corner. 
This same story of economic reinvigoration is playing out across the nation in dozens of rural counties that have embraced renewable energy projects, delighting taxpayers, enriching county coffers and making previously unaffordable public works projects possible.
Despite deep-red voting records and conservative dispositions, many of these counties have few regrets about allowing towering wind turbines and lines of solar panels to dot bits of their countryside.
Some fear rural places like Randolph County in western Indiana may be among the last to see a financial revitalization from renewables, as developers engulfed in regulatory confusion pause projects they worked ‒ sometimes for years ‒ to bring to fruition.
Like many rural counties across the United States, Randolph had been in a slow-moving decline since the 1970s. Agriculture required fewer workers, and small-scale manufacturing moved away. Good jobs were scarce, young people left, and the population fell by 18%. 
Green energy has been an economic windfall in many places that welcome it.
Much as Alaska, North Dakota and Texas grew rich when drilling companies struck oil and natural gas, solar and wind power can bring counties both construction work and cash, in the form of leases and tax revenue from the power plants. 
In Randolph County, Energy giant EDP Renewables North America (EDPR NA) won residents over. The company’s first wind farm in Randolph went online in 2014 with 100 turbines. 
The wind and solar projects, which have expanded since, sit on an amalgam of leases from 227 landowners and have a combined capacity of 698 megawatts, which is enough to power 164,600 homes, according to EDPR NA.
The company has poured millions into Randolph County, paying tens of thousands of dollars for tornado repairs last year, for instance. EDPR NA redid over 60 miles of roads after construction and funded the county courthouse’s HVAC system upgrade ‒ a $1.5 million project.
EDPR NA is on track to pay the county over $65 million by 2038. Randolph’s total annual budget runs about $20 million.
One of EDPR NA’s leases belongs to Chris Retter, a fifth-generation Randolph County farmer. 
The Retter family has grown corn, soy and a little bit of wheat for decades. But around 2011, Retter’s father got a letter from a developer, looking to lease land for a wind farm.
The economy was looking bleak, Retter said. So while the offer to rent out acreage for wind turbines was unfamiliar, it landed at a time when the family had a hard time saying no to stable income.
“It was kind of a no-brainer,” Retter said. “The money was enticing.”
Then came a messy construction process. Retter said the sheer amount of people and equipment felt like an urban invasion into the family’s rural slice of Indiana.
Farm roads were squashed under the weight of cranes and large trucks. When EDPR NA installed transmission lines to send power away from the turbines, the process ruptured sections of his drainage tile, the critical but expensive underground plastic tubing that lowers the water table and keeps crops from getting waterlogged.
But EDPR NA paid to fix everything: building new tile and new roads. Between land farmed by Retter, his mother, his brother and their sons, the family saw four turbines installed. And they could still plant rows of soybeans right up to the access paths around each turbine. 
In 2017, EDPR NA approached the Retters again. The company wanted to know if they were interested in leasing out more land, this time for solar panels.
This was a tougher decision, Retter said. Solar panels take farmland out of production for between 20 and 50 years, unlike wind.
“You feel like you’re doing something you’re not sure your ancestors would have approved,” he said. “That weighs on you.”
In the end, the decision came down to the money. For many farmers, deciding to lease land to solar panels might be the difference between one day saving or selling their farms, Retter said. 
Today, more than 100 acres of Retter land, much of which used to grow corn for ethanol, now hosts solar panels for the Riverstart solar park ‒ a simple shift from one form of energy production to another.
Jon Peacock, a Randolph farmer, has not leased to wind or solar. He just didn’t trust it. And he’s worried the county is too enamored by the promise of more cash from new solar projects to fully consider what they’re giving up.
“I think we can be smarter about where we put solar panels. I think we can put some thought or some discussion into how much is enough,” he said.
Peacock and some other residents have expressed concern about how renewable projects change the landscape and tie up farmland for decades. 
Still, some are convinced the projects were a boon.
“I’m a firm believer that that’s where your fire trucks come from, your hospitals, your libraries, your auditoriums. That’s what I see down the road,” said Andy Fahl, a lifelong resident who now mows solar fields for EDPR NA and works as one of the company’s liaisons to the community. “I’ll be dead and gone, but it will be generational wealth.”
This story was produced with support from the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.
Sophie Hartley, an environment reporter with the IndyStar, part of the USA TODAY Network, can be reached at sophie.hartley@indystar.com or on X at@sophienhartley. IndyStar’s environmental reporting is made possible through the support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.

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