Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Americana
Energy isn’t usually what draws people into small‑town leadership. You run for the council or join the planning commission because you care about streets and schools, housing and jobs, maybe the new playground down by the river. But sooner or later, usually at budget time, the line items for electricity, natural gas, and fuel start […]
JCShepard.com | June 21, 2026 | Category: Policy, Economy Rural America is about to feel the energy transition in a very literal way: not as a headline about megawatts and gigatons, but as center pivots moved for a transmission line, prime farmland plowed under for a bright new data center lighting up the night sky, […]
The creation of the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) by Executive Order 7037 followed the TVA Act in 1935. The REA, which was later incorporated into the US Department of Agriculture and became the Rural Utility Service, was established to support electrification in rural areas. When the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 provided federal loans to […]
JCShepard.com | June 2026 | Category: Policy, Economy Every comprehensive plan has a chapter that doesn’t always get the spotlight. It sits between community facilities and land use, quietly doing its job. In Thayer County, Nebraska, for example—a rural county of about 5,000 residents who I worked with on their comp plan—that chapter is titled […]
A Holistic Rural Energy Vision for The Rural Energy Stack: Layering Biomass, Geothermal, and SMRs with Wind and Solar for Resilience How Integrated Clean Energy Systems Can Revitalize Rural Economies Today’s bonus post follows up on this week’s fourth installment in JCShepard.com’s October series on rural energy, exploring how the clean energy transition is reshaping […]
How biomass, geothermal, and SMRs are powering the next chapter of rural clean energy This is the fourth installment in JCShepard.com’s October series on rural energy, exploring how the clean energy transition is reshaping life across America’s heartland. While solar and wind have dominated the headlines—and much of our previous coverage—this week we dig into […]
Is the future of rural America to be found in our past? Author L. Michelle Moore thinks there are lessons there, especially for small towns and rural areas. In her book, Rural Renaissance: Revitalizing America’s Hometowns through Clean Power (Island Press, 2022), Michelle starts with the roots of rural power. Originally, each home produced their […]
Hey, another US EIA brief fits into “real work”. More recycling raises average energy content of waste used to generate electricity Most municipal solid waste (MSW) used to generate electricity contains both biogenic and non-biogenic components. As consumers recycle or recover more biogenic waste (such as food waste and yard clippings) and discard more non-biogenic […]
At this month’s Western Planner Conference, I noticed a lot of the presenters (more than one) used a lot of data and graphics from the US Energy Information Administration, when they were talking about energy development. Now, I pride myself on being a data geek, but I had not heard of this federal font of, […]
