Horizon II: How Restored Prairie Will Contribute to Renewable Energy Production
By Adam Voight
First published in Conservation Federation of Missouri Magazine, January 2025
Restoring 30 million acres of prairie in 30 years is an ambitious goal, but if there is one person who can realize that vision, it’s Rudi Roeslein. Rudi founded Roeslein Alternative Energy (RAE) in 2012 after spending more than 30 years building a global engineering, manufacturing, and modular construction company. Energy consumption, reliance on fossil fuels, and the associated environmental impacts deeply concern Rudi, prompting him to invest $57 million of his own money to develop a solution.
Rudi prides himself on finding solutions where others see problems. When he purchased a farm in northern Missouri, it reflected the toll that decades of farming marginal land can take on the landscape. As an avid outdoorsman and conservationist, his goal was to improve wildlife habitat while maintaining a farming operation. Rudi’s farm, along with many others across the Grand River basin —once a thriving grassland ecosystem—had been stripped of its biodiversity. Erosion had taken its toll, and soil quality had degraded from years of traditional row-cropping practices.
Opportunities for Land, Wildlife, and Renewable Energy
To be clear, we do not view farming as the problem. We strongly support our farmers and the essential role they play in feeding and fueling our country. Our aim is to help restore balance to native ecosystems while creating additional revenue streams for farmers and landowners. Current practices are not sustainable. However, we can improve soil, water, and air quality while introducing new financial incentives to landowners. There is an opportunity to develop solutions that restore native ecosystems, benefit wildlife, and produce renewable energy. Rudi’s northern Missouri farm is now a shining example of what is possible.
In September 2023, Roeslein Alternative Energy was awarded an $80 million grant from the U.S.D.A.’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program. The funding will support a five-year pilot project called Horizon II (H2), which will take place in Iowa and Missouri. The goal of H2 is to demonstrate a “Climate-Smart Future for Corn, Soybean, Livestock, and Renewable Natural Gas Production.” Eleven partner organizations are contributing to the program: Iowa State University, University of Missouri, Missouri Prairie Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation Districts of Iowa, Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance, Iowa Soybean Association, Sievers Family Farms, Soil and Water Outcomes Fund, Smithfield Foods, and Veterans in Agriculture.
With this funding, we can begin realizing the pathway to restoring native grasslands while helping support our country’s energy needs. The grant award is a significant step toward advancing RAE’s core mission: developing a market-based solution that uses sustainably harvested biomass to create renewable natural gas while assigning economic value to restored native grasses, prairie plants, and winter-hardy cover crops.
“Since founding RAE, our overarching goal has been to provide farmers an alternative way to use land, especially highly erodible acres, in ways that will benefit the environment, wildlife, and their livelihood,” said Rudi Roeslein, RAE founder and chairman.
Horizon II digestors, Stockton, Iowa
Restoring Native Grasslands and Supporting Energy Needs
The grant will compensate farmers and landowners for biomass production, greenhouse gas reductions, and carbon sequestration in the soil through an outcomes-based program promoting cover cropping and prairie restoration practices. The program will focus on restoring marginal, low-performing acres to prairie. Program partners will collaborate with farmers, landowners, and other stakeholders, including historically underserved producers, to ensure equitable access to the opportunities offered by low-carbon agriculture. RAE and its partners will supply native seeds and assist with the prairie planting. The resulting sustainably harvested biomass will be added to anaerobic digestors to create renewable natural gas.
Our nation has a massive 2.3 million miles of natural gas pipeline capable of supporting renewable energy growth. Renewable natural gas created from manure and prairie biomass has the same molecular composition as traditional natural gas and can be fed directly into the national grid. This offers a new pathway for creating renewable energy in the heartland. While not the only solution for improving energy production, it is one that can help reduce reliance on fossil fuels and provide additional income to local farmers and landowners—a win for rural farming and for restoring native grasslands.
From a communications standpoint, our primary goal is to educate landowners and the public on the opportunities available and the improvements we are making. We developed a media platform, Prairie Prophets, to showcase this work. It can be accessed at PrairieProphets.com and across all social media channels. Through this platform, we will share stories highlighting the work being done throughout the grant, as well as the people and places involved. We hope to inspire not only landowners but also the children and grandchildren of current landowners. These themes are further explored in a new book, Prairie Power: How Prairies Can Heal the Planet, written by Kathy Love, with a foreword by Rudi Roeslein. Prairie Power traces the history of settlement and the transformation of the landscape. It describes the immense natural value of native plants and animals who depend on them. It also offers hope to rural communities and their residents who want to make a living on the land.
Inspiration and Collaboration
We’re all inspired by someone—Rudi Roeslein inspired me with his vision and the way a successful private company can not only maintain a solid bottom line but also revolutionize renewable energy production while supporting conservation efforts. Rudi himself was inspired by others. Dr. Peter Raven, one of the world’s leading ecologists, was an early supporter of Rudi’s vision of combining prairie restoration with renewable energy. At every obstacle that seemed insurmountable, Dr. Raven offered encouragement. Ecologist Dr. David Tilman also played a significant role. Dr. Tilman’s research suggests that “growing mixed prairie grasses on the world’s degraded land could produce enough bioenergy to replace 13 percent of global petroleum consumption and 19 percent of global electricity consumption. Fuels made from prairie biomass are ‘carbon negative,’ which means that producing and using them actually reduces the amount of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere. Prairie plants store more carbon in their roots and soil than is released by the fossil fuels needed to grow and convert them into biofuels.”1
Dr. Lisa Schulte Moore’s development of the STRIPS program (Science-based Trials of Row crops Integrated with Prairie Strips) has shown incredible improvements in soil and water quality when implemented alongside row-crop production. Her research at Iowa State University finds the following: “By strategically adding 10% prairie strips to a no-till corn or soybean field, they found a 95% reduction in soil loss a, 37% reduction in water runoff a, 77% reduction in Phosphorus runoff, 70% reduction in Nitrogen runoff a, and a 70% reduction in nitrous oxide emissions b.”2
The work of Dr. Raven, Dr. Tilman, and Dr. Schulte Moore is inspiring. Along with other efforts— such as Dr. Tom Richard’s C-Change group and the Grass2Gas project—they are leading the way in bridging the gap between biodiversity, cover crops, prairie restoration, and renewable energy. It takes visionaries like Rudi Roeslein to bring these people and practices together. With private and public support, we can achieve a balance between restoring the natural landscape and producing renewable energy.
As conservationist Doug Duren states, “It’s not ours; it’s just our turn.” We all benefit from inspiring the next generation by doing our part to leave the land a little better than how we found it.
–
1 Tilman et al. 2006. Carbon-Negative Biofuels from Low-Input High-Diversity Grassland Biomass | Science
2 a Schulte et al. 2017; b lqbal et al. 2015; a Hirsh et al. 2013; a Tyndall et al. 2013.
