A little good news for a change

Thirty-five-year-old Cody Two Bears from Cannon Ball is the driving force behind [a] 300-kilowatt solar farm [on Standing Rock Reservation] - North Dakota's first, which formally opened last year - and he dreams of bringing solar-powered energy infrastructure and "energy sovereignty" to Native American reservations around the United States.

"It's pretty amazing for high-poverty communities like Cannon Ball and Standing Rock. This is a big deal," said Two Bears. [...] Before the reservation declared a shelter-in-place order due to the coronavirus, the electricity the solar farm produced powered a local gym, a youth activity centre and Cannon Ball's veterans building, where dozens of meals were served to the elderly.

"This is over 50 percent of all the solar infrastructure [in the state]," Two Bears added. "We still have a lot of coal-powered plants. So, our co-ops and electricity companies don't necessarily like things like this coming on to their grid because it takes away a little from coal jobs. Something like this is very special. But this is only the beginning."

[...]

A former local council leader, Two Bears has put to good use the energy and community forged from the Dakota Access oil pipeline protest movement of 2016-2017.

[...]

The majority of Standing Rock residents live in government-owned, decades-old trailers unsuitable for North Dakota's brutal winters, which results in huge fuel bills for an already impoverished community.

[...]

According to the US Energy Information Administration, 60 percent of the state's energy production comes from crude oil, 33 percent from gas and coal and the remainder - just seven percent - is from renewables, mainly wind.

"They [the state government] don't want to lose their fossil fuels because they believe in it and because they get a huge tax [payment] off of oil production," said Two Bears, who had to go as far as California to find a company that would insure the solar farm.

[...]

The fact that solar is land-intensive represents another barrier. "[That's] one of the greatest challenges the industry faces in North Dakota," said North Dakota Democratic Representative Corey Mock. "Specifically, North Dakota has a state rule designed to preserve prime farmland for production agriculture."

[...]

Despite the barriers to solar in North Dakota, renewable energy is slowly turning mainstream across the US's heartland. The North Dakota Public Service Commission has approved a commercial solar farm near Fargo that would be the first of its kind. Two Bears said he hopes to eventually train young people here and on reservations elsewhere in solar energy production and upkeep.

  alJazeera

I'm guessing they'll be needing some guards.