How about we put Solar canopies over many highways and state roads, providing MicroGrid energy to all the local cities and towns. Wind had been cheaper until Solar went through the floor. Then the issue is Space. We definitely do not want to cover good farmland... let's avoid that (although some shade among certain crops and grazing animals seems to be fine).
Best places for wind power? There have been good wind studies for this. We obviously want to maximize offshore wind for the areas where the largest cities are.
* George W. Bush got federal money to set up the HVDC high voltage "backbone" for all the Texas wind Farms to plug into as they were established... do the same with offshore wind electric backbone
Great energy coverage!!! We were driving to Niagara Falls from PA and came across a wind farm in western NY. Many turbines were spinning but many weren't and I would guess maybe 25% not working??? I looked at Google maps at the High Sheldon wind farm and see the turbines (sat view) and all the access roads needed but at least it appears that the land is farmable. I would love to see an article interviewing local residents/farmers about this wind farm wrt to noise, land value, land resale issues, etc. Also love to know the financials of this wind farm - elec. production, tax credits, etc etc. I'm just going to guess that there are a lot of subsides for these sites????
Forgive me if I missed it, but I didn't see in this very good article how many renewables projects have been APPROVED in the same time frame as the 735 noted rejections. That seems an important factoid to give the 735 context. Do we know that number?
Maybe so, but are people objecting to something that otherwise makes sense on objective bases? Is there a credible, understandable to the common person (say one's next door neighbor), analyses that support this statement for solar, on-shore windmills, and off-shore windmills?
Like all energy sources, wind and solar are accompanied by a host of environmental and economic risks. To answer your question requires an individual to subjectively rank those risks in order to form a reasonable comparison. What is important to you? Cost? Viewshed? Land? Carbon emissions? Environmental impact? Each criterion yields different results.
James Conca published a comparison in Nuclear News in June of 2023 entitled “How to compare energy sources—Apples to apples.” It is the most objective comparison of energy sources I’ve seen, and is understandable to any high school graduate. No technical jargon, no complex mathematical models. The original comment argued that wind and solar are not clean, nor are they cheap. That paper alone might help you understand why folks say renewables aren’t clean or cheap.
Another useful tool to compare energy sources is power density. Bryce has written about this in the past (13 August 2023, among others). There are a number of very good studies available in the literature that show the power density of wind and solar to be miniscule when compared to natural gas or nuclear. That means that to extract an equivalent amount of energy, far more natural resources are needed for wind and solar than fossil or nuclear. If resource sustainability is important to you, is using 10 times the amount of a given resource, say steel or copper, to get the same amount of energy a responsible use of that resource? Is it sustainable?
If you are a regular reader of Mr. Bryce, you know how much wind and solar “cost.” The value of a wind subsidy in 2022 was $2.75 per terawatt-hour; solar’s value was $6.84 per TWH. Nuclear’s value was $0.05 per TWH. Those numbers are the amount of money spent by the federal government to subsidize each source. Renewables are NOT cheap, and Green ISN’T clean.
Your original question implied that renewables “otherwise make sense on objective bases.” There is ample information to infer they do not. Thus, the decision rests with a very simple question: what is important to you?
Don’t forget that the useful lives of wind & solar installations are also much shorter than for nuclear (and gas). Solar panels degrade at a percent a year. Be generous and give it 25 years to lose 20% of original performance. So, build 5 solar plants today, and in 25 years you only have 4 left — the equivalent power-generation capacity of one plant is GONE, and all those panels need to be replaced.
My understanding is that major components of wind installations, including the non-biodegradable (as in, never) blades, also last only about 20 years. I saw an article about one of the early installations in Spain that has reached 20 years of age. The taxpayers are reportedly having apoplexy as they ponder having to replace the huge wind farm they already paid for once, and what seems like quite recently.
I believe the U.S. taxpayer-funded subsidies are much greater than $2.75 per terawatt-hour for wind and $6.84 per terawatt-hour for solar. . (A terawatt-hour is a billion kilowatt-hours.)
C'mon, Robert. I don't disagree that the mainstream media is pro-renewables. But to say the NYT and NPR *never* cover local opposition to solar and wind projects is just false. It took me 30 seconds to Google up these, and there are plenty more:
As Demand for Green Energy Grows, Solar Farms Face Local Resistance
There are plenty of people out there already lazily bashing the media without actually checking their facts. You're too good a reporter to be one of them.
They (major media) do cover local opposition to wind and solar. Almost exclusively they represent opposition as “NIMBY-ism”, and rarely dig deep enough to cover the technical reasons to oppose these things (which was my testimony). Also they never cover the “asset churn” grift that’s a huge driver. Robert understands well both of these issues in depth.
That’s a fair criticism. My lede should have been clearer. My point was that small-town media outlets, like the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan, routinely cover the rejections and restrictions of wind and solar projects that are happening in rural areas. Big media outlets don’t. And you’re right, the Times and NPR have covered some of these conflicts over the past years. I have updated the lede and added a couple of sentences at the top of the third paragraph to acknowledge that coverage. I noted the corrections at the bottom of the piece and acknowledged your critique. Tnx. RB
One other question local resident should ask is who will be responsible for the junk when these projects reach the end of their lifespans. I suspect a lot of these companies will go belly up and governments and/or landowners will be stuck with remediation (or the junk will just be left in place to rust and leach chemicals).
There appears to be no funding for decommissioning (which is the case for nuclear power.) While visiting the Tehachapi wind area in California I recall seeing hillsides covered with smaller, rusting wind turbines. The blades were not turning.
Every wind and solar contract I have reviewed allows the developer to terminate the contract at any time for any reason, with the exception that one requires 30 days notice. The $800 an acre is not real and could be gone in the blink of an eye.
I appreciate your point of view, and my aim is not to be pedantic. The point is that the $800 an acre could dry up overnight, and some of the best tillable land will be diminished or destroyed forever. I think we agree that the money is hard to resist. But no landowner I have ever met fully understands the risks in the wind or solar contract he signed.
I see where you are going. Yes, this farmer didn’t take the money but others are. I’m glad Smith has imposed conditions, we have more than enough installed, having lots of frequency excursions issues because of it.
Hi Robert. Thanks for this great article. I have been involved with a group of agricultural land owners in Missouri who are resisting the construction of utility-scale solar industrial power plants on our farm lands. Working at both the county and state government levels, it has been tough going and frustrating. I think we have done a pretty good job of educating our County Commissioners and state legislators, but we face a daunting uphill battle. The solar lobbyists are a formidable foe. Could you do some investigation of the DOE's plan to develop National Interest Electric Transmission
Corridors? The Midwest Plains proposed corridor crosses Missouri in what appears to be the exact planned location of Invenergy's Grain Belt Express high voltage transmission line project. The proposed width of the NIETC corridor is 5 miles, with a length of 780 miles. That works out to a seizure of land of approximately 2,496,000 acres. No doubt much of this land in privately owned. The Tiger Connector of the Grain Belt Express is on my neighbor's land. The standard width of a high voltage transmission line corridor is approximately 150 feet, which would occupy approximately 13,978 acres along the 780 mile route. So why is the federal government going to seize over 2 million acres when it only needs 14,000? Thanks for any information you can provide, and please make your supporters aware of this next big land grab.
We, here in Texas, have the giant monolithic grid operator, ERCOT! There isn't a wind or solar project that it hasn't been approved for connection to the Texas grid. It doesn't give a rats about the communities in revolt against more renewable projects that cannot be relied upon for energy when needed, its unbelievably expensive, and is costing Texas the stability it must have for the grid. Meanwhile, in its winter report, it sent out a request to shuttered power plants to restart so it can ensure winter reliability since ERCOT needs 3GW of generating capacity to meet demand. As usual, ERCOT is about as competent as the BLM, BOEM, FWS, EPA, etc. since it received only 11MW of demand response capacity in the submitted bids.
ERCOT is a propaganda machine and said "oh, it was just too short a period to respond" so they cancelled the request for purchase and said "it's fine, we'll just work with the PUC to work on defining the kinds of products that could be utilized throughout the year. So, we hold our breath that another Uri won't be coming our way since ERCOT can't for the life of it, figure out its algorithms so its always putting its finger in the air to calculate its supply and demand for Texas.
In the meantime, the people in Val Verde County, Texas have had it with ERCOT as 2 ranchers sued it for the approval of a wind farm across thousands of acres of scrubby acres near the pristine Devils River. They won their lawsuit, and the 46 wind turbines, 700' tall was tossed by the courts. But, not because it was the wind farm, it was found that it was being developed by the Chinese. No, No, in Texas, but now, the citizens of Val Verde Co. are once again in the court since a Spanish company Greenailia came in to take over and ERCOT is thrilled. So, here in Texas, the wind and solar madness is becoming a huge issue in the Lone Star State, but although the voters approved a $10 billion energy fund for gas fired power plants, ERCOT will still be the giant mismanaged grid operator that is buying unreliable power with no guardrails and continues to raise its rates to make up for its disastrous decisions.
Meanwhile, our electric generation co-op is sending letters to tell its customers how excited it is to be installing smart meters in our homes. It's a bit odd, when you call to ask questions, and decide you want to opt-out, that excitement turns into a very angry and defensive representative who is no longer that once excited and thrilled voice you first engaged with on the phone. You have to wonder why they are so pissed off?
I too am concerned with smart meters and utilities collecting and selling usage data but I'll also add that our smart meter saved my a** a few years ago when we were on vacation and my daughter was home during a storm. The power went out in the neighborhood and I was notified by email/text of the outage and also when power was restored; however, our home did not get power. A quick check with utility website and the utility confirmed power was restored to my meter. My daughter had to reset the main load center breaker to get power back in the house. Useful tech that can be abused.
"In politics, regulatory capture (also called agency capture) is a form of corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve the commercial, ideological, or political interests of a minor constituency, such as a particular geographic area, industry, profession."
Regulatory capture sounds like a good description for the California Public Utilities Commission. This regulator has a budget in excess of $2.5 billion per two years. It lacks an Inspector General to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse. There is no guaranteed appellate pathway for aggrieved parties to CPUC decisions. Our nonprofit, Californians for Green Nuclear Power serves as an intervenor supporting the public interest. We've been harmed by this pair of deficiencies.
This is directed at some of the usual suspects in the comments.
As Robert frequently points out, including in this piece, rural opposition to giant RE projects spans the political spectrum. My rural lake county has its share of tree huggers and “libtards”, along with conservatives, libertarians, and other persuasions. We are all united in protecting our natural landscape (nature tourism accounts for about a third of our economy) and our property values against rapacious RE developers.
Over a decade ago, residents and local leaders came together to enact strict wind and solar ordinances that, among other things, require setbacks of 3/4 mile from non participating property lines (same as Germany, of all places), 1+ miles from lakes and natural areas, and developers to create escrow accounts held by the county whose value = decommissioning costs determined by an independent engineer. These measures are wildly popular across the board among our residents.
With hundreds of lakes and natural areas, it is basically a de facto ban - without an outright ban that might attract the unwelcome attention of the zealots in the state legislature, who see only “economic development” dollars. I’m happy to report
not a single major RE project has been proposed. We didn’t achieve this victory by calling each other names.
The moral of the story is: if you want to win this battle in your community, then you best be prepared to make common cause with your fellow citizens, regardless of political persuasion.
You won't read about it in the New York Times or Atlantic Monthly, but the StopTheseThings blog from down under has one or two articles every day. They occasionally quote an article by Robert.
"They invent claims that project opponents are backed by hydrocarbon money." More likely, the projects are backed by hydrocarbon money because every watt of wind or solar label capacity has to be matched by four or so watts of coal, gas, or nuclear (because batteries and pumped storage and towing rocks up mountains simply cannot work -- see http://vandyke.mynetgear.com/Worse.html). The Rockefeller Brothers Foundation was the mover and shaker behind the anti-nuclear hysteria starting in the 1960's, and they (along with Bloomberg and others) are still funding it, including by way of the Sierra Club.
California has pretty much stripped all zoning authority from local jurisdictions. You live in a single-family-home suburb? Too bad, a developer just bought four houses just South of yours and will be building a five-story stack-and-pack -- with no indoor parking -- and your city or county can't stop it. Too bad about your rooftop solar panels being in the shade 24/7.
"Wind projects hurt nearby property values." Farmers are discovering that the $25,000/yr they get from a windmill, which some view as "drought insurance." isn't such a good deal. They're supposed to last for 25 years, but when subsidies run out after ten or fifteen years, maintenance is abandoned and they quit working, so the farmers get $350,000 to $500,000. Then they discover in the 6-point type on page 23 of the contract that they're responsible for the $600,000 bill for decommissioning each monster.
@Robert Bryce I have your book "Gusher of lies"
How about we put Solar canopies over many highways and state roads, providing MicroGrid energy to all the local cities and towns. Wind had been cheaper until Solar went through the floor. Then the issue is Space. We definitely do not want to cover good farmland... let's avoid that (although some shade among certain crops and grazing animals seems to be fine).
Best places for wind power? There have been good wind studies for this. We obviously want to maximize offshore wind for the areas where the largest cities are.
* George W. Bush got federal money to set up the HVDC high voltage "backbone" for all the Texas wind Farms to plug into as they were established... do the same with offshore wind electric backbone
Need to update the Sara Bronin link. I know her, actually. Luke Bronin, her husband the former mayor of Hartford, Connecticut
(they have just separated)
** Here's the broken link from in your article:
https://www.achp.gov/news/achp-announces-termination-consultation-idaho-project
Er….great. For some fucking reason.
Great energy coverage!!! We were driving to Niagara Falls from PA and came across a wind farm in western NY. Many turbines were spinning but many weren't and I would guess maybe 25% not working??? I looked at Google maps at the High Sheldon wind farm and see the turbines (sat view) and all the access roads needed but at least it appears that the land is farmable. I would love to see an article interviewing local residents/farmers about this wind farm wrt to noise, land value, land resale issues, etc. Also love to know the financials of this wind farm - elec. production, tax credits, etc etc. I'm just going to guess that there are a lot of subsides for these sites????
Forgive me if I missed it, but I didn't see in this very good article how many renewables projects have been APPROVED in the same time frame as the 735 noted rejections. That seems an important factoid to give the 735 context. Do we know that number?
sadly, too many!
Windmills and solar are not clean or cheap. A massive grift,
Maybe so, but are people objecting to something that otherwise makes sense on objective bases? Is there a credible, understandable to the common person (say one's next door neighbor), analyses that support this statement for solar, on-shore windmills, and off-shore windmills?
Like all energy sources, wind and solar are accompanied by a host of environmental and economic risks. To answer your question requires an individual to subjectively rank those risks in order to form a reasonable comparison. What is important to you? Cost? Viewshed? Land? Carbon emissions? Environmental impact? Each criterion yields different results.
James Conca published a comparison in Nuclear News in June of 2023 entitled “How to compare energy sources—Apples to apples.” It is the most objective comparison of energy sources I’ve seen, and is understandable to any high school graduate. No technical jargon, no complex mathematical models. The original comment argued that wind and solar are not clean, nor are they cheap. That paper alone might help you understand why folks say renewables aren’t clean or cheap.
Another useful tool to compare energy sources is power density. Bryce has written about this in the past (13 August 2023, among others). There are a number of very good studies available in the literature that show the power density of wind and solar to be miniscule when compared to natural gas or nuclear. That means that to extract an equivalent amount of energy, far more natural resources are needed for wind and solar than fossil or nuclear. If resource sustainability is important to you, is using 10 times the amount of a given resource, say steel or copper, to get the same amount of energy a responsible use of that resource? Is it sustainable?
If you are a regular reader of Mr. Bryce, you know how much wind and solar “cost.” The value of a wind subsidy in 2022 was $2.75 per terawatt-hour; solar’s value was $6.84 per TWH. Nuclear’s value was $0.05 per TWH. Those numbers are the amount of money spent by the federal government to subsidize each source. Renewables are NOT cheap, and Green ISN’T clean.
Your original question implied that renewables “otherwise make sense on objective bases.” There is ample information to infer they do not. Thus, the decision rests with a very simple question: what is important to you?
Don’t forget that the useful lives of wind & solar installations are also much shorter than for nuclear (and gas). Solar panels degrade at a percent a year. Be generous and give it 25 years to lose 20% of original performance. So, build 5 solar plants today, and in 25 years you only have 4 left — the equivalent power-generation capacity of one plant is GONE, and all those panels need to be replaced.
My understanding is that major components of wind installations, including the non-biodegradable (as in, never) blades, also last only about 20 years. I saw an article about one of the early installations in Spain that has reached 20 years of age. The taxpayers are reportedly having apoplexy as they ponder having to replace the huge wind farm they already paid for once, and what seems like quite recently.
I believe the U.S. taxpayer-funded subsidies are much greater than $2.75 per terawatt-hour for wind and $6.84 per terawatt-hour for solar. . (A terawatt-hour is a billion kilowatt-hours.)
C'mon, Robert. I don't disagree that the mainstream media is pro-renewables. But to say the NYT and NPR *never* cover local opposition to solar and wind projects is just false. It took me 30 seconds to Google up these, and there are plenty more:
As Demand for Green Energy Grows, Solar Farms Face Local Resistance
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/02/business/solar-farms-resistance.html
The Clean Energy Future Is Roiling Both Friends and Foes
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/12/climate/wind-solar-clean-energy.html
Energy Firms, Green Groups and Others Reach Deal on Solar Farms
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/business/energy-environment/solar-farm-agreement.html
He Set Up a Big Solar Farm. His Neighbors Hated It.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/nyregion/solar-energy-farms-ny.html
Solar Projects Draw New Opposition
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/business/businessspecial2/24shrike.html
In some fights over solar, it's environmentalist vs. environmentalist
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/18/1177524841/solar-energy-project-location-debate
Why the pushback against more renewable energy infrastructures?
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/14/1182074476/why-the-pushback-against-more-renewable-energy-infrastructures
Some Midwest states look to counter local opposition to wind and solar farm projects
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1238704568/some-midwest-states-look-to-counter-local-opposition-to-wind-and-solar-farm-proj
There are plenty of people out there already lazily bashing the media without actually checking their facts. You're too good a reporter to be one of them.
They (major media) do cover local opposition to wind and solar. Almost exclusively they represent opposition as “NIMBY-ism”, and rarely dig deep enough to cover the technical reasons to oppose these things (which was my testimony). Also they never cover the “asset churn” grift that’s a huge driver. Robert understands well both of these issues in depth.
That’s a fair criticism. My lede should have been clearer. My point was that small-town media outlets, like the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan, routinely cover the rejections and restrictions of wind and solar projects that are happening in rural areas. Big media outlets don’t. And you’re right, the Times and NPR have covered some of these conflicts over the past years. I have updated the lede and added a couple of sentences at the top of the third paragraph to acknowledge that coverage. I noted the corrections at the bottom of the piece and acknowledged your critique. Tnx. RB
Appreciate your integrity! (Even though I disagree with your point of view.)
Fair enough.
One other question local resident should ask is who will be responsible for the junk when these projects reach the end of their lifespans. I suspect a lot of these companies will go belly up and governments and/or landowners will be stuck with remediation (or the junk will just be left in place to rust and leach chemicals).
There appears to be no funding for decommissioning (which is the case for nuclear power.) While visiting the Tehachapi wind area in California I recall seeing hillsides covered with smaller, rusting wind turbines. The blades were not turning.
We DID ask those questions in our testimony against Koshkonong Solar. They were dismissed by the Administrative Law Judge as not applicable.
A farmer friend here in Alberta told me a sobering fact.
If he leases his land to a farmer or company to grow food he would make $100/acre.
If he leases it to a renewables developer, it’s $800 an acre
So a section of land 640 acres is $64k per year for food, $500k.
Hard to resist those kind of $$
Every wind and solar contract I have reviewed allows the developer to terminate the contract at any time for any reason, with the exception that one requires 30 days notice. The $800 an acre is not real and could be gone in the blink of an eye.
Of course it is real, the point is how much more it is, taking useful farmland and converting it to intermittent electricity.
I appreciate your point of view, and my aim is not to be pedantic. The point is that the $800 an acre could dry up overnight, and some of the best tillable land will be diminished or destroyed forever. I think we agree that the money is hard to resist. But no landowner I have ever met fully understands the risks in the wind or solar contract he signed.
I see where you are going. Yes, this farmer didn’t take the money but others are. I’m glad Smith has imposed conditions, we have more than enough installed, having lots of frequency excursions issues because of it.
We pray for the best for you, your family, and your land.
Hi Robert. Thanks for this great article. I have been involved with a group of agricultural land owners in Missouri who are resisting the construction of utility-scale solar industrial power plants on our farm lands. Working at both the county and state government levels, it has been tough going and frustrating. I think we have done a pretty good job of educating our County Commissioners and state legislators, but we face a daunting uphill battle. The solar lobbyists are a formidable foe. Could you do some investigation of the DOE's plan to develop National Interest Electric Transmission
Corridors? The Midwest Plains proposed corridor crosses Missouri in what appears to be the exact planned location of Invenergy's Grain Belt Express high voltage transmission line project. The proposed width of the NIETC corridor is 5 miles, with a length of 780 miles. That works out to a seizure of land of approximately 2,496,000 acres. No doubt much of this land in privately owned. The Tiger Connector of the Grain Belt Express is on my neighbor's land. The standard width of a high voltage transmission line corridor is approximately 150 feet, which would occupy approximately 13,978 acres along the 780 mile route. So why is the federal government going to seize over 2 million acres when it only needs 14,000? Thanks for any information you can provide, and please make your supporters aware of this next big land grab.
We, here in Texas, have the giant monolithic grid operator, ERCOT! There isn't a wind or solar project that it hasn't been approved for connection to the Texas grid. It doesn't give a rats about the communities in revolt against more renewable projects that cannot be relied upon for energy when needed, its unbelievably expensive, and is costing Texas the stability it must have for the grid. Meanwhile, in its winter report, it sent out a request to shuttered power plants to restart so it can ensure winter reliability since ERCOT needs 3GW of generating capacity to meet demand. As usual, ERCOT is about as competent as the BLM, BOEM, FWS, EPA, etc. since it received only 11MW of demand response capacity in the submitted bids.
ERCOT is a propaganda machine and said "oh, it was just too short a period to respond" so they cancelled the request for purchase and said "it's fine, we'll just work with the PUC to work on defining the kinds of products that could be utilized throughout the year. So, we hold our breath that another Uri won't be coming our way since ERCOT can't for the life of it, figure out its algorithms so its always putting its finger in the air to calculate its supply and demand for Texas.
In the meantime, the people in Val Verde County, Texas have had it with ERCOT as 2 ranchers sued it for the approval of a wind farm across thousands of acres of scrubby acres near the pristine Devils River. They won their lawsuit, and the 46 wind turbines, 700' tall was tossed by the courts. But, not because it was the wind farm, it was found that it was being developed by the Chinese. No, No, in Texas, but now, the citizens of Val Verde Co. are once again in the court since a Spanish company Greenailia came in to take over and ERCOT is thrilled. So, here in Texas, the wind and solar madness is becoming a huge issue in the Lone Star State, but although the voters approved a $10 billion energy fund for gas fired power plants, ERCOT will still be the giant mismanaged grid operator that is buying unreliable power with no guardrails and continues to raise its rates to make up for its disastrous decisions.
Meanwhile, our electric generation co-op is sending letters to tell its customers how excited it is to be installing smart meters in our homes. It's a bit odd, when you call to ask questions, and decide you want to opt-out, that excitement turns into a very angry and defensive representative who is no longer that once excited and thrilled voice you first engaged with on the phone. You have to wonder why they are so pissed off?
Meanwhile, ERCOT
I too am concerned with smart meters and utilities collecting and selling usage data but I'll also add that our smart meter saved my a** a few years ago when we were on vacation and my daughter was home during a storm. The power went out in the neighborhood and I was notified by email/text of the outage and also when power was restored; however, our home did not get power. A quick check with utility website and the utility confirmed power was restored to my meter. My daughter had to reset the main load center breaker to get power back in the house. Useful tech that can be abused.
Seems to be a common practice:
"In politics, regulatory capture (also called agency capture) is a form of corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve the commercial, ideological, or political interests of a minor constituency, such as a particular geographic area, industry, profession."
Regulatory capture sounds like a good description for the California Public Utilities Commission. This regulator has a budget in excess of $2.5 billion per two years. It lacks an Inspector General to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse. There is no guaranteed appellate pathway for aggrieved parties to CPUC decisions. Our nonprofit, Californians for Green Nuclear Power serves as an intervenor supporting the public interest. We've been harmed by this pair of deficiencies.
If taxpayers weren’t being forced to unwittingly support this scam the $reen energy industry would vanish.
This is directed at some of the usual suspects in the comments.
As Robert frequently points out, including in this piece, rural opposition to giant RE projects spans the political spectrum. My rural lake county has its share of tree huggers and “libtards”, along with conservatives, libertarians, and other persuasions. We are all united in protecting our natural landscape (nature tourism accounts for about a third of our economy) and our property values against rapacious RE developers.
Over a decade ago, residents and local leaders came together to enact strict wind and solar ordinances that, among other things, require setbacks of 3/4 mile from non participating property lines (same as Germany, of all places), 1+ miles from lakes and natural areas, and developers to create escrow accounts held by the county whose value = decommissioning costs determined by an independent engineer. These measures are wildly popular across the board among our residents.
With hundreds of lakes and natural areas, it is basically a de facto ban - without an outright ban that might attract the unwelcome attention of the zealots in the state legislature, who see only “economic development” dollars. I’m happy to report
not a single major RE project has been proposed. We didn’t achieve this victory by calling each other names.
The moral of the story is: if you want to win this battle in your community, then you best be prepared to make common cause with your fellow citizens, regardless of political persuasion.
You won't read about it in the New York Times or Atlantic Monthly, but the StopTheseThings blog from down under has one or two articles every day. They occasionally quote an article by Robert.
"They invent claims that project opponents are backed by hydrocarbon money." More likely, the projects are backed by hydrocarbon money because every watt of wind or solar label capacity has to be matched by four or so watts of coal, gas, or nuclear (because batteries and pumped storage and towing rocks up mountains simply cannot work -- see http://vandyke.mynetgear.com/Worse.html). The Rockefeller Brothers Foundation was the mover and shaker behind the anti-nuclear hysteria starting in the 1960's, and they (along with Bloomberg and others) are still funding it, including by way of the Sierra Club.
California has pretty much stripped all zoning authority from local jurisdictions. You live in a single-family-home suburb? Too bad, a developer just bought four houses just South of yours and will be building a five-story stack-and-pack -- with no indoor parking -- and your city or county can't stop it. Too bad about your rooftop solar panels being in the shade 24/7.
"Wind projects hurt nearby property values." Farmers are discovering that the $25,000/yr they get from a windmill, which some view as "drought insurance." isn't such a good deal. They're supposed to last for 25 years, but when subsidies run out after ten or fifteen years, maintenance is abandoned and they quit working, so the farmers get $350,000 to $500,000. Then they discover in the 6-point type on page 23 of the contract that they're responsible for the $600,000 bill for decommissioning each monster.