America needs affordable energy, and that demand sits at the crossroads of creating economic stability while balancing environmental responsibility.

Green energy solutions like wind and solar farms hold promise, but there's been strong pushback over safety and land use.

As the country weighs questions about infrastructure and affordability, what kind of energy

future should we invest in?

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Monday, February 23rd, 26.

Here to explore those questions and to share the perspective of farmers who've grappled with the issue of land use is USA Today reporter Elizabeth Weiss. It's wonderful to have you back on the excerpt Beth.

Happy as always to be here.

When we spoke about this topic two years ago, you told me that as a country, we've made a

commitment to getting to 100% carbon neutral electricity by 2035. President Donald Trump has now reversed that. Is this goal now just dead in the water?

Did we make any meaningful progress before Trump took office? Well, as a goal, the U.S. has walked back from

that, and we no longer have that as a goal. That said, wind and solar are just so cheap to build and quick to build

that we're already up to 17% of U.S. electricity coming from wind and solar power at this point.

So that, while it's slowing, that number continues to increase. And we had hoped,

under the Biden administration, the plan had been that we would get to 100% solar. That's not going to happen. But it does continue to increase because it just makes sense in a lot of places. Let's head to some of the places that have seen their economies reinvigorated by renewable energy money. How of wind and solar farms help shape Randolph County, Indiana? So we went there and it's a wonderful farming county. When they got

wind and solar power, and specifically wind, they were able to spend a lot of money building up their infrastructure. They redid the

county fairground, which if you spent any time in rural America, 4H is huge. They were able to

work on the 4-H sites. It ended up being a $2.8 million investment just in the county fairground, which is always important for an

ag community. Money went into school districts, infrastructure, ambulances, all the things that

make a community vibrant and viable so that people stay there. And that's one of the concerns

as population is lowered. I mean, we're seeing a contraction

in the number of farms in the United States as they're consolidating.

Counties really need the infrastructure to keep people in place because if there aren't good

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