Students power rural America’s clean energy future

Many communities – heavily reliant on costly fossil fuels – face uncertain futures without access to more affordable energy. Rural energy cooperatives in the U.S. are particularly vulnerable, with fossil fuels making up an average of 61% of their energy mix compared to 19% nationally. Global market fluctuations make fossil fuel prices unpredictable, leaving these communities’ health and economies at risk.

“There is a huge opportunity to help bring jobs back to rural America in a way that can last for generations,” said Lisa Patel, a clinical associate professor of pediatrics and co-instructor of an innovative Stanford course that aims to close critical information gaps and support cleaner energy solutions across the country. “It’s unlike the extractive economy we see from coal and oil – that is both boom and bust, and bad for the health of the residents there.” 

If rural areas are excluded from the clean energy transition – which has slowed under the Trump administration but continues nonetheless – the consequences will be felt far beyond utility bills. Fossil fuel infrastructure, such as coal, oil, and natural gas plants, pollutes air and water, is often placed in low-income and historically marginalized communities, and can drain local resources, therefore stalling economic development. 

To help address these challenges, Stanford students from multiple disciplines collaborated with rural NGOs through the Renewable Energy Transition in Rural America: a Human and Planetary Health Action Lab graduate-level course.

Two organizations, Renew Missouri and Clean Wisconsin, emerged as partners – each facing urgent decisions about fossil fuel infrastructure: one advocating for a coal plant’s retirement and the other opposing a proposed natural gas plant. In the Action Lab this past fall, students worked with experts at Renew Missouri and Clean Wisconsin to produce actionable deliverables like health impact assessments and policy briefs tailored to each NGOs’ policy goals and community needs. 

In addition to analyzing how fossil-fuel-reliant energy systems affect communities, student researchers in the course identified funding opportunities such as the Inflation Reduction Act’s Empowering Rural America program. Designed to help rural cooperatives shift to clean energy, the program drew enthusiastic interest, with project proposals totaling 4.5 times the amount of available funding. Yet even with such overwhelming demand, some communities struggled to take advantage of the program due to political divisions around clean energy and a lack of accessible, community-specific data.

Navigating data deserts and political hurdles

Students deployed their training in law, public policy, public health, and environmental science and policy to examine federal and state agency databases. They dug into fragmented and limited datasets to extract insights on local communities, and they tracked how pollution crosses state borders. In doing so, they linked health complications, like asthma, to particulate matter exposure and noxious gases emitted by natural gas plants. 

“It was helpful to have a specific kind of complex problem where you had to think through the political, logistical, and practical factors at play in order to put together a report that was actually relevant for the partner,” said Kelsey Freeman, a dual master’s student from rural western Colorado.

Clean Wisconsin has now reviewed the final report and is working with the Stanford research team to develop a communication plan for local stakeholders to help build support against the proposed gas plant. Renew Missouri has also now reviewed the health impact assessment and policy recommendations and is considering avenues to publicize the importance of shifting away from fossil fuel to renewable energy production. 

“The health lens was a game-changer,” said Brett Korte, staff attorney at Clean Wisconsin. “It allowed us to talk about power plant transitions without it becoming political. We could focus on asthma, on emergency visits, on families – and that resonates everywhere.”

Patel hopes the course empowers decision makers to become stronger advocates for a clean energy transition by clearly showing them the economic and health advantages. “To miss that [opportunity] will result in the death knell of certain communities,” Patel said. “We have the opportunity to help invest in rural America in ways that are sustainable.”

Patel is also a member of the Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI). 

Patel and Deborah Sivas, the Luke W. Cole professor of Environmental Law, taught Renewable Energy Transition in Rural America: a Human and Planetary Health Action Lab in partnership with the Stanford Center for Human and Planetary Health, the Stanford Law and Policy Lab, and the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health.