In the small ranching town of Cokeville, Wyoming, two cattle producers are pushing back against soaring energy costs. For Tim Teichert and Jason Thornock, the solution isn’t abandoning agriculture — it’s pairing it with clean energy.

Their goal is simple, according to a report from Inside Climate News. They want to keep their ranches viable, their families rooted in the community, and their land intact for the next generation. They believe that solar power could help make that possible. However, local laws are preventing them from offsetting their power costs.

Electricity is one of the largest operating expenses on a ranch. Teichert estimates his annual electric bill alone reaches $90,000, while Thornock’s can climb to $150,000. Those costs make it increasingly difficult for family-run operations to survive, let alone plan for the future.

In 2023, both men applied for grants through the federal Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), which was designed to help farmers invest in renewable energy. The idea was not to sell power for profit, but to generate enough electricity on their own land to offset their daily operations — aka agrivoltaics, where farmland supports both food production and energy generation.

Across the country, many farmers are exploring how clean energy can supplement traditional income while preserving working land. Solar installations can coexist with crops and livestock, even benefitting crops while reducing reliance on dirty fuels. Advocates say this dual-use approach could strengthen rural economies while cutting climate pollution.

For consumers, that can mean more resilient food systems and greater long-term energy stability. For farmers dealing with unpredictable seasons and narrow margins, saving money on expensive power bills can mean the difference between holding onto land or selling it off in pieces.

However, Wyoming’s net-metering laws cap how much solar energy farms can credit back to the grid. While Teichert and Thornock were hoping those laws would be amended to be more inclusive of ranchers, a bill to raise the cap failed, leaving net-metering only useful to residential customers with smaller solar setups.

While Thornock initially backed out of plans to build a solar array, fearing the laws wouldn’t change to support it, Teichert went ahead — and now he’s in the red with his investment. Because the utility company offered such low rates on a power purchase agreement (much less than he pays as a consumer), he opted instead to buy a battery system to store energy from his setup.

As Chris Brown, executive director of Powering Up Wyoming, explained, per Inside Climate News, “A lot of ranchers really look to renewables to help diversify their revenue stream, keep the ranch whole, and keep their family on the ranch, keep the land together.”

For Teichert and Thornock, the issue is personal. Without relief from mounting costs, they fear family ranches like theirs may slowly disappear.

“We’re not asking for a handout,” Thornock said. “I just want to be able to compete. I just want to be able to make a living.”

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