Third-party financing, use of farm waste could turn tide, Wisconsin Energy Institute report says

Home to some of the last coal-fired power plants that may ever be built in the United States, Wisconsin has erected too many barriers to cleaner energy sources and fallen behind many Midwest neighbors in a sector with an 8% global growth rate.

That's one of the key findings of a report from the new Wisconsin Energy Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which takes the state as well as the nation to task for not going further to encourage development of alternative energy sources such as solar power and projects that convert farm waste to energy.

With no coal reserves or natural gas fields of its own, the report's author suggests, Wisconsin can capitalize on what it does have: loads of cow manure, vats of food processing waste and the technological innovation of state companies aiming to help create on-site power systems.