Introducing The Global Renewable Rejection Database: At Least 72 Rejections Of Wind/Solar Since 2023

The resistance to the landscape-destroying sprawl of Big Wind and Big Solar is real, it’s growing, and it’s global. This new database provides proof.

British residents organized to oppose a solar project proposed for an area near Wakefield. Credit: BBC/Martin Hague

W. Edwards Deming, the American statistician and management theorist, is widely recognized as the father of the quality movement in manufacturing. His best-known quote is: “In God we trust, all others must bring data.”

Since 2015, I have been documenting the backlash in rural America against the encroachment of wind and solar projects in the Renewable Rejection Database. It is the only free, searchable, online resource of its kind. Over the past decade, I have documented 771 rejections or restrictions of solar and wind projects in communities from Maine to Hawaii.

The Renewable Rejection Database brings the data by documenting the backlash to alt-energy. It provides clear proof that land-use conflicts are the binding constraint on the expansion of wind and solar in the US. These hundreds of examples show that despite the never-ending hype about wind and solar that we hear from academics, climate activists, and legacy media outlets, those forms of weather-dependent power generation cannot — will not — ever be able to provide the vast amounts of reliable electricity our economy needs.

Why not? There isn’t enough available land.

Today, I’m expanding my reporting on the backlash against wind and solar with the launch of the Global Renewable Rejection Database. Like the original, which focuses exclusively on the US, the new database provides proof of the raging opposition to Big Wind and Big Solar happening all around the world. Since 2023, there have been at least 72 rejections or restrictions of wind and solar projects — and that is an absolute minimum number. Those rejections are happening all across Europe, as well as in India, Australia, South Korea, Greece, and Canada. Furthermore, the total number of rejected projects could easily be 20% or 30% higher than what I’ve included in the database.

Here’s a screen grab from the Global Renewable Rejection Database.

For now, I am publishing the new database as a Google Sheet. Due to the significant labor involved in creating it, I’m keeping the Global Renewable Rejection Database behind the Substack paywall.

Let’s take a look. (With two charts.)