NEPHI, Utah –  Stunning views of Mount Nebo in the southern Wasatch Range. Achingly blue skies. Cattle and sheep dotting pastures alongside occasional fields of hay, alfalfa and corn.
In other words, an ideal location for solar panels.
Despite its staunchly conservative politics, Juab County, here in the center of the state, is more open than many in the United States to such renewable sources of energy – at a time when the Trump administration has taken dramatic steps to undermine both wind and solar energy.
In a nation where being open to wind or solar power is increasingly a political litmus test, Juab sees things a little differently, despite almost 90% of voters in Juab choosing Donald Trump for president last year. 
Nationally, dozens of counties have seen strong anti-renewable groups spring up to fight solar and wind projects, often fueled by misinformation, politics or simply the feeling that wind turbines and solar panels have no place in a rural landscape that many residents have chosen as home.
That scenario didn’t play out in Juab.
In the 7,300-person county seat of Nephi, American flags flutter on seemingly every other block and the Fourth of July parade is second only to the annual Ute Stampede Rodeo as the biggest event of the year.
And yet saying yes to a big solar farm was never a political decision, said Nephi Mayor Justin Seely. It was about what made sense for residents.
The first proposal to put solar panels on a 600-acre plot came in 2018. 
“The land it’s on was bringing in $400 a year in taxes,” said Kodey Hughes, superintendent of the county’s Juab School District. The property was “literally sagebrush and rattlesnakes. It wasn’t being used for anything.”
Two years of negotiations began. They were thorough but cordial and the consensus was “it was a good way to go for our community, a great opportunity,” Seely said. 
Construction began in 2020 and by 2021 the project was generating 80 megawatts of electricity – enough to power 25,532 households. 
Last year, the land brought in $522,144 in taxes – roughly half of which went to the school district. Over the course of its 20-year lifespan, the solar project is projected to generate $5.7 million in property taxes.
The project itself sits on a dry hillside just north of the town of Mona. During the growing season, its more than 240,000 panels are kept free of sage brush by a herd of sheep that happily graze between the lines, napping in the shade of the panels during the hottest parts of the day.
“They keep everything clean,” said Seth McPherson, the electrician who tends to the array. “The sheep come in in March and are taken out when the snow flies.”
For the county’s school district, the solar farm is “almost like a golden ticket,” Hughes said. Sitting in a conference room with the school board president, he gleefully ticked off the services and equipment they can now provide for their 2,800 students.
While the money is only a sliver of the district’s $15 million annual budget, it allows for extras that make a “huge difference” to students, said Dale Whitlock, who was school board president for 16 years. “Most of our expenses are in payroll, that’s 90% of our whole budget. This allows for extras.”
Using the solar money, the district has launched a capstone project in its high school, added a swim team, started a boys volleyball team and bought computers and funded 3-D printers and robotics equipment.
When a group of third graders came to Hughes wanting to start a recycling program, he didn’t have to think twice.
“Normally I’d say, ‘You know what, let’s put that in next year’s budget,’” he said. “Now all of a sudden I can say ‘Yes!’… We don’t have to rob Peter to pay Paul.” 
In 2018, the Juab school board had been “adamantly opposed” to the solar project, said Amanda Smith, vice president of external affairs for Virginia-based energy company AES, which owns the Clover Creek Solar Project. 
“The county was very ambivalent,” Smith said. “They’ve got this big, beautiful Juab Valley and they didn’t want to see it ruined.”
As a state, Utah has always been an “all of the above” place when it comes to energy, Smith said. 
Over the decades the state has gotten its power from coal, oil, natural gas and increasingly solar and wind. To make electricity in the state right now, wind is cheapest, with natural gas and solar energy next on the list. 
But that doesn’t mean finding locations for solar projects is easy, she said. Getting the Clover Creek project up and running took years of meeting with the community and holding open houses. Company personnel were so present that some residents will still spot their Salt Lake City staff in stores and restaurants and greet them by name.  
Whitlock, who was school board president during the discussion period, was among those who had to be convinced it was the right thing to do.
“We had a few people come out and say it was ugly,” he said. “It’s not the prettiest thing out there, but it’s needed. We all need energy and it benefits us. And it’s not permanent – if it needs to go in 20 years, they can remove it.”
Unlike elsewhere, Juab didn’t go through days of County Commission meetings where the project was discussed while large groups of anti-renewable activists – often wearing identical T-shirts – argued against it during hours of heated testimony.
Instead, in Juab, discussions stayed calm, civil and fact-based.
Local residents suggested several reasons their much-loved area avoided controversy. It’s a small, closely knit community full of families that have lived there for generations, with few recent transplants who came for the untouched vistas, Seely said. 
Its residents are also deeply religious, with about 80% belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The combination created an atmosphere where discussions and decision-making could be civil and focused on creating the best deal for everyone.
“We’re not thinking about what’s good for the individual, but what’s good for the community,” Seely said. 
For Whitlock, who was on the school board for 16 years, it meant there was enough public confidence to allow elected leaders to do their jobs.
“The majority of people really trust us,” he said. “That’s one thing I felt when I was on the school board, they trust us and what we’re going to do. I never had anyone come up and tell me we were doing a terrible job.”
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.

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