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Gee Whiz! Residents don’t like wind turbines (E&E News) – Enjoy it?


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By Robert Bradley Jr. – May 31, 2022

“[A]Across the United States, rural communities have become flashpoints to look for wind and solar energy projects…. [T]his cumulative impact… could be important to efforts to achieve the climate goals. And experience the Apex in Vermillion County [Indiana] shows how challenging it can be. “(News E&EMay 18, 2022)

Does the tide work against the government-sanctioned hideous superstructures politely called industrial wind turbines? Robert Bryce has been following the community’s rejection of such projects since at least 2016 and 2017. His today has reached the tally 330 industrial and wind solar projects (databank list here). The numbers are growing, and with electricity problems on the rise, conundrums are being asked about intermittent, carnivorous renewable energy.

The mainstream media portrays the use of renewable energy as a separate issue. But intrepid Bryce is breaking the story of an inevitable “renewable energy future” and a “reset” from mineral energy. In fact, the renewable energy takeover is the opposite of “green” as documented in Human planet and, a decade ago, Falling wind.

The public has been paying attention, especially in rural America, where wind and solar developers are already well-versed with the promises and outcomes. And with grids wounded, wind turbines and multi-acre solar ‘farms’ are billboards of power outages and outages.

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A recent E&E News article, “Independent test highlights challenge of gazing at the wind”(Jeffrey Tomich 05/18/2022) tells the story, one that the climate/regeneration complex doesn’t want to hear. The following excerpt.

This area [in Newport, Indiana served by Duke Energy Corp.’s Cayuga Coal Generating Station] considered the new sporting symbol of homegrown energy, in the form of wind turbines. But officials in Vermillion County effectively banned wind energy last year, in the face of opposition from renewable energy developer Apex Clean Energy Inc.

The county is hardly alone. About a third of the State of Hoosier has wind restrictions because of similar restrictions. Indeed, across the United States, rural communities have become a flashpoint to look for wind and solar energy projects.

What makes the Vermillion County results remarkable is that very few, if any, developers have gone to the extraordinary extent that Apex has done to win the public’s trust. Not only does it provide unprecedented input in helping to decide where to build a wind farm, but also a share of the profits. But this new process yields the same results as the less ambitious ones: no projects at all.

On its own, a county’s wind energy denial is not documented. But the cumulative impact of local zoning restrictions across the country could affect efforts to meet climate goals. And the Apex experience in Vermillion County proves just how challenging it can be.

“The bottom line is that we have to make a lot of things to decarbonise,” said Sarah Mills, a lecturer at the University of Michigan who studies local renewable energy permitting.

According to a source from research from Princeton University last year on “Net-Zero America.”

Wind power alone would have to increase by at least sixfold, with turbines built over 240,000 to 1 million square kilometers, depending on which of the five decarbonization pathways is chosen. The larger area would span the states of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Iowa combined….

However, finding suitable sites to develop projects is a potential bottleneck. Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor at Princeton and author of the net-zero study, said in an email: “In many cases, it can be flexible to find alternative positioning patterns that avoid limitations so. “But the more restrictions there are, and the more reliant the scenario is on wind and solar power, the more difficult things get.”

An upcoming study from the clean energy nonprofit ClearPath focuses on the impact of restrictions on wind energy options in a key state – Iowa – and finds a “significant impact” from locally established failures and regulations for wind development.

None of this is news for renewable energy developers, who must navigate zoning regulations that can vary significantly from county to county in most states, or in Michigan, at the city level. town. “It was a challenge,” said Hilary Clark, facility manager for American Clean Power, a trade association for the renewables industry based in Washington.

The project layout challenge is not new for Apex, a company based in Charlottesville, Va. built wind farms across the United States

In 2019, rivals pushed for a zoning change that killed Apex’s 300-megawatt Roaming Bison Wind project in Montgomery County, less than an hour’s drive east of Vermillion County….

That’s why the company tried a “radical experiment” on how it engages with Vermillion County, including allowing residents to help decide where and how a project might fit in. there.

“The basic idea was that we wanted to give the community a wide range of possibilities to help us actually design a project – not just say yes or no to a project we designed. We hope this will give them a greater sense of control and ownership, possibly leading to local favoritism towards the end result and, ideally, creating a better project. in the process,” said Dahvi Wilson, the company’s vice president of public affairs, in an interview.

“One of the premise of our idea is that the standard particle process that exists to make decisions doesn’t work well,” she said. “We hope to get to a place where we can have an honest conversation about these potential trade-offs and benefits and let them figure out what they want.”

Wilson has a background in community organization and has come up with a new strategy based on scores of studies on the topic, including work by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. . Berkeley Lab researchbased on a survey of residents living near existing wind farms, it was found that the communities hosting the projects were strongly influenced by their perceptions of the development….

Research has identified three dimensions of equity. The first involves a community having a say in a project. The community must also view developers as transparent and influence the outcome….

Apex launched a campaign, Exploring Wind Vermillion, using direct mail, phone calls, surveys and social media to solicit opinions on a wind energy project in the county. The company held a webinar and set up an office along a busy street across from the local Hardee’s restaurant.

To help build trust, the company hired a third-party facilitator. It also entered into rental agreements with anyone willing to own a turbine (with the understanding that only those who did would receive the money). The company pledges to share 1 percent of the profits from the wind farm to a nonprofit or organization chosen by the residents — in addition to payments to the landlord for rent and taxes paid to the county.

A company website also showcases an online mapping tool that divides the county into eight zones. Residents can view maps of wind speed, line access, and population density. A heat map showing where the company gets the most interest from landowners….

But the whole approach operation had very little traction. Very few people joined the company or responded to Apex surveys. The ones paying attention are the county commissioners, who pursue the zoning ordinance for wind energy projects.

The result: a 36-page ordinance that, among other restrictions, required that the base of turbines be set back at least 2 miles from adjacent property lines and the right of way.

Even a setback of half a mile would put nearly the entire county outside the limits of wind growth. Two miles is a de facto ban.

“There isn’t an acre in the county where you can put a turbine,” says Wilson….

How to engage rural communities on the topic of renewable energy is an area of ​​growing interest among researchers and advocates across the country…. Generally speaking, selling renewable energy to rural communities is retail politics…. And warning about the dire consequences of climate change is not in that message….

Kopp says that information about wind and solar projects is often cited in planning disputes at the local level, and that plays an important role. But he views these unfounded claims about turbine noise or negative impact on property values ​​as justification for opposing a project, not necessarily as motivation….

Last comment

Deformation? Many posts at MasterResource have recorded problems experience of nearby residents from the industrial wind. Tomorrow’s post looks at the growing international movement to apply false claims to wind developers in this respect.

So when will the “green” movement hit the big wind and solar infrastructure requirement – ​​and the thin, intermittent renewable energy that matters? Asking the same question another way, when will environmentalists really understand the climate and energy to go green with the best energies, those that are neutral to consumers, contributors? tax?


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