Michael Sykuta on Rural Energy
ICLE Academic Affiliate Michael Sykuta was quoted by My Ozarks Online in a story about rural energy in Missouri. You can read the full piece here.
“We’re kind of caught in the crossroads of that with both the benefits and costs that come along with that,” said Michael Sykuta, an economist and soon-to-be director of the new Center for Rural Energy Security — a University of Missouri research initiative that will examine the economic and social impact of energy infrastructure on rural places.
The center’s scholars aim to provide information and context to the often controversial topics of developing renewable energy, power plants and transmission lines in rural communities.
“One thing that Missouri can offer that most other places can’t is a policy-oriented research institute that really takes into consideration what the implications of energy policy are for rural communities, the agricultural communities, the Midwest broadly,” Sykuta said.
Sykuta said there’s not much information about how energy infrastructure — power lines, wind turbines, solar panels, coal or nuclear plants — affect the communities in which it is generated. Therefore, policymakers are short on details when analyzing the economic, environmental, health and cultural impacts of a project.
Energy demand in the U.S. is expected to continue to grow, driven by the electrification of homes and cars and especially by the development of AI data centers — server farms that require a significant amount of electricity.
“There’s a large amount of infrastructure that has to be built and most of that ends up crossing rural communities, which impacts farmers, impacts residents, impacts the economies of local communities,” Sykuta said. “And quite frankly, despite all of the work that is done, there’s not a lot of work actually examining systematically what the consequences of these investments are.”