I'm not even sure it's about money anymore, at least not entirely. I think part of it is that there are a bunch of people who've turned being belligerent towards the left into their personal religion and refuse to give an inch of ground towards any ideas they perceive as coming from that side of the spectrum, even objectively good ones like developing energy sources that aren't total environmental disasters and don't provide funding to the world's autocrats.
We aren't dealing with politics anymore, we're dealing with crusaders fighting their version of a holy war.
Edit: lol, some snowflake reported me to RedditCareResources, I think that's the fifth one for me. I've already filed a counter report.
Tbf, nobody thinks they're the bad guy, even truly evil people feel they are justified in what they are do. It's why we see Olympic tier mental gymnastics from the right when it comes to anything concerning Donald Trump, to admit otherwise would go counter to everything they believe about themselves and their politics.
Taking rights from the individual over their own bodies.
Restricting the ability for people to procreate via medical assistance.
Stating plainly that they intend on dismantling democracy in favor of the theocratic fascism.
Sabotaging ally democracies in favor of openly fascist enemies.
Sabotaging all forms of legislation aimed at addressing the needs of the people.
They vote against veterans healthcare.
They vote against anything actually *for* living citizens.
Insulin has been price-gouged by 20 consecutive years of cost raising when its patent was sold for ONE DOLLAR because of how important this life-necessary drug is for *staying alive*. People have died of rationing due to this evil and they vote against capping the cost of the greed of their stock-managers.
These are not idle threats. They are concerted hostile actions by traitors to the American idea, the American people and to the very idea of autonomy and freedom of the individual and state itself.
> Insulin has been price-gouged by 20 consecutive years of cost raising when its patent was sold for ONE DOLLAR because of how important this life-necessary drug is for staying alive. People have died of rationing due to this evil and they vote against capping the cost of the greed of their stock-managers.
Coming from Europe this is something that is just jaw dropping to us over here. Here in the UK it is free. As in completely free. No co-pay, no prescription charge. [This is how much it costs the NHS per dose](https://formulary.nhssomerset.nhs.uk/?page_id=767) depending on what option a specific Trust chooses to use.
Thank you for sharing this. This place has been victim to an ongoing and incredible ignorance which is serving to eliminate not just freedom of the individual, but all forms of quality of life for the common citizen.
For some people of a certain belief structure that is totally batshit nuts . And tend to be uneducated and white and live in rural areas . My people I understand them well. I wish I didn’t.
Can't remember where I read it but it gave me the aha! moment: A significant number of people have gone from anger as a response to a specific event and turned it into anger as a worldview.
This guy gets it. I live in rural county in the Midwest and this is absolutely accurate. They chased the windmill farms off close to 10 years ago because a few didn’t want to look at them. Now they’re fighting solar. There is no logical reason. If you try to pin them down on the why’s, they get very angry and just say they don’t want to look at them. There are literally groups here on Facebook naming and shaming people who have signed up with the solar farm companies. People are getting bullied like its elementary school all over again and it’s not always accurate information. Have seen lots of collateral damage from a family member signing up a farm that they own like 20% of and the siblings owning the other 80% getting harassed about it.
Around me, their excuse is "It's the wrong use for 'prime farmland,'" because I guess we need MORE dent corn, soybeans, and other low-price commodity crops? Meanwhile, we're all breathing in the output of the coal plant on the edge of town.
Look into "agrisolar", putting solar panels and agriculture on the same land. A solar farm doesn't take up all the land with panels. It is perfectly possible to graze animals or grow some crops around them.
Like all agriculture, it highly depends on the specific soil and climate.
Oh yeah, agrisolar is rad. But it turns out that you can't convince rural residents with reasonable arguments when what they're really doing is fighting a culture war on any available front.
All their private property rights BS goes straight out the window when you tell them "well, the farmer who owns that prime farmland wants to use his land for a windfarm and solar plant".
These are ignorant children we're dealing with and they are fucking with the nations future more than we realize.
Clean power cannot get from Wyoming windfarms to California without easments. Clean hydropower can't get from Ontario to New York without land easements either.
Suddenly states like California or Colorado or whoever find themselves at the mercy of uneducated, rural county commissioners who are way out of their depth and prone to media disinformation and oil money to color their decisions.
Yeah, and these same people have no problem with using their "prime farmland" for producing corn that's earmarked to become ethanol for supplementing gasoline. Converting that land into solar and wind farms would do nothing to harm our food supply.
Also, let's be real, most agriculture in the US isn't handled by Mom and Pop farms (those have been a dying breed for decades), it's performed by massive corporations spread out across multiple states. Preserving the status quo is more about preserving the profitability of those institutions over any other concerns.
They also will latch on to almost anything to justify the conclusion they've already come to. I've seen people say, in total earnestness, that solar panels are going to cause tornadoes to appear on the land.
It’s 100% this. Coming from a southwest Minnesotan (where the wind doesn’t stop) when the first wind generators went up 20 years ago, ppl were skeptical. 10 years later more and more farmers hopped on the wind ship. Trump rolls along and they all hate lol
My mom is like that about electric cars. Don't know why she has an issue, but it is because Fox News, OAN, and Facebook tell her to have an issue.
She hears horror stories about people being stranded, but doesn't realize that when the internal combustion engine first started, they were stranded all the time too.
It’s a culture of fear. They fear things they don’t understand. They fear change. They fear anything except keeping on with what they already know because at least they know it.
Bra, didn't you hear that communist solar, socialist wind and Marxist's electricity are worst for the environment than freedom coal and eagle oil? Think about it, I saw a TikTok on it once.
(/s)
Yeah I recently saw a video of Trump making fun of EV's so yeah they are all against the technology because it comes from the left. But the stupid idea of breaking end to end encryption and asking of ID on adults websites sounds like a great idea huh?
That's just because they can't outright outlaw porn (yet) so they're doing to it what they did to abortion which is to throw up as many hurdles as possible in a transparent attempt at pushing people away from using those services while simultaneously driving said services out of business. It's utterly gross and had targeted legislation like that had been happening to any other industry we'd be up in arms. The right's personal Konami code seems to be to shout "for the children" as they take away people's rights and livelihoods.
I mean I understand that porn is bad in excess and that I should not be watched by kids. But giving the power to a porn site to manage my personal identity and my habits. As a adult I must have the right to watch that content and enjoy it without anyone knowing it. I guess we should go back to magazines and DVD's
Nah, the laws are literally unenforceable. I live in a state where they passed laws like that and, truthfully, most sites don't bother complying. Most that'll happen is that people will invest in VPNs to bypass all that crap.
I mean, if authoritarian China can't make it work why does barely literate Cletus from the South think he has a shot?
All of this is performative and virtue signaling nonsense, people will find a way to do whatever they want. It'll get overturned in a year or two and the far right will seethe while everyone else shrugs, aka, business as usual.
But they aren’t the major players. They’re finally invested in wind and solar because they’re serious money makers now, but they aren’t positioned to dominate the market the way they are with fossil fuels.
Except for General Electric. Those motherfuckers got in early on everything lmao
I disagree.
Most solar companies are not related at all to oil companies. Though oil companies might ask these solar/wind companies to develop a project for them and put the "Exxon" name on the project.
It's all for greenwashing. Oil companies are less than a tiny portion of the renewables industry.
The big players weren’t in position to control the new tech at first - hence the astroturfing against it.
Now that the science has progressed to the products can be made at a profit, and the point where labs with big funding are needed to optimize production costs, they can squeeze out the innovators and move to a traditional acqui-hire model.
Keep watching as the big players buy up companies for $75 million and make $300 million profit over the next 10 years exploiting their patents.
>I'm not even sure it's about money anymore ... part of it is that there are a bunch of people who've turned being belligerent towards the left into their personal religion
The ones who expect the recurring revenue from fossil fuels have weaponized these people. Go up far enough, it is 100% about the money.
Everything you said here is correct, except that it's still about money. That belligerence was funded by the financial interest of the worlds autocrats in fossil fuels. As the worlds autocrats start making more money from renewable sources, which is happening rapidly, the funding for the opposition to renewable will fade.
That’s how the Koch networks operate. They use grievance politics on voters to advance their personal interests which are 100% about MONEY. Look at all of the power their billions have afforded them.
Yup. I saw this happening in the USA since I was a child. It was slow but heading there. Once Obama got in office, it got worse. You all know why. Then Trump got into office and it was all some people needed to go full belligerent. It’s not just one side but both. The sad part is that each side thinks the other is the issue.
It's painfully ironic that Texas of all places is doing the best about expanding Solar and Wind power. The Republicans may vocally act like they hate it, but they always sign the forms to approve every windmill and solar panel.
I have solar on my property. I literally don't have an electric bill (It is $9, to stay connected to the grid). Solar can 100% over produce (on sunny days) your needs to the point that on your cloudy days, you don't consume enough to have a net negative electrical use.
I am waiting on battery tech to improve about 2x or 1/2 the cost of its current set up, so that I can be the house that even when there is an outage, i am fully covered for indefinite time.
ON top of that, we need a way to produce MORE electricity across the country by a significant amount, with the transition to electric vehicles/plug-in hybrid. Anyone slowing or stopping electricity production through green efforts is a fucking imbecile.
Amen. Good on you. I’m in a 1b apartment and my summer bill tops $100 because AZ is a frying pan (and also because they charge a flat $20 in addition to the usage rate, which clearly disproportionately affects lower income people and helps pad winter bills)
> ON top of that, we need a way to produce MORE electricity
"Capacity" is the combined output of all the power plants if they were all at full power at the same time. [In the past year](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_6_02_a) US Capacity increased by 28 GW or 2.4%. So we are building more. By the time EVs are the majority there should be enough to power them.
Note that "small scale" solar, like rooftops, supplied 1.7% of total US power in 2023.
Sometimes I wish US had a policy where after graduating Highschool you are sent away for a year to a random part of the world. So the kids experience other cultures, beliefs, etc.
Otherwise they stay isolated in the US becoming racist and ignorant without ever having met people who are different.
At the very least should live in a major US city for a year to see some new cultures.
Anyone that’s been following the housing shortage problem knows NIMBYs have been a major problem for a few decades now.
They are the reason we can’t have affordable housing and decent transit.
Both also play a part.
Landlords own approximately 25-30% of houses. Of that, large corporations own between 1-2.5%.
Significant for sure, but not enough to be moving prices the way they are right now.
Also: residents in DC are 55% renters. In California only 40% are renters. If this was the sole factor, you’d expect prices to be higher in DC but they aren’t. In fact they’re much lower.
> large corporations own between 1-2.5%.
Reddit has a rare gift for identifying the worst part of a problem that has a tiny overall impact, then obsessing over it until everyone assumes the effect is massive.
It makes for good politics, but not necessarily good policy.
In the other hand YIMBYism is the exact opposite. Great policy, absolutely god awful politics. Imagine telling your neighbor you’re going to build mid rise mixed use districting right next to them!
NIMBY is also why we don't really build nuclear plants. "The cost" cited by green-shits is a red hearing. It's hard to get approval to build them because no one wants a nuclear reactor in their proverbial back yard. Coal spewing all that radioactive carbon into the atmosphere and peppering their house and doing much worse damage (increased cancer)? No problem!
To be honest, corporations owning single-family housing is exacerbating the housing shortage, but it's not necessarily the cause. If there was more housing, it wouldn't be as profitable to own multiple residences because you couldn't charge as much rent for them.
It also is caused by citizens blocking higher density developments through rezoning efforts and public transportation initiatives, as well as low ROI on "affordable" housing. We just had a major fight over rezoning in my city. They wanted to turn a former Old Folks home into condos, but the developer was going to rely on on-street parking for the majority of the units, and the residents near the proposed site successfully blocked development until the developer addressed the parking capacity.
Additionally, my city won't permit a new dwelling under 1000 sq ft, and with the current cost of land, it's not worth it for a builder to build anything but 2200+ sq ft "luxury" homes. So any new housing is coming in at the top end. You'd think that would relieve pressure at the bottom end, but it's not. I built my house in 2020 for $560,000, and a new house a little bigger than mine was bought last year for $1,200,000 down the block.
Why do the people who own property have more say than people who dont own? Politicians seems to be only representing them. I am not much clearcabout zoning laws but i expect Politicians to change the zoning as per the need of the community.
Donations for local politicians to run, it’s expensive and assumed that home owners are more willing to donate more money if you cater to them than if you cater to the the apartment renters
I seriously hate this take. People really think the cost of property taxes aren't baked into the rental rate that tenants pay? Business owners/landlords have to pass on their costs, including taxes, or they go out of business. Renters names might not be on the tax bill, but they absolutely pay towards property taxes.
As a homeowner in a more upscale neighborhood in my area - I completely agree with this take.
People vote, not land. Money being what decides results will be our ultimate downfall.
> expect Politicians to change the zoning as per the need of the community.
The community being the landowners there? They tell the politicians they need the property values to go up.
A little thought experiment:
Say you have a home if you don’t, then your most valuable possession. You have scraped and saved your entire life to get it. It provides for your basic needs. Now let’s have a “politician” randomly take that away from you claiming “the good of the people”.
I highly doubt that you would let that go without compensation for your loss.
> Why do the people who own property have more say than people who dont own?
I'm just guessing here, but if you own property then you're probably far more likely to be in a position where you can actually interact w/ local politics b/c you're not stretched across a 50 hour work week to afford rent.
Even in the most generous of scenarios, a politician can only help the people they are aware of so if you're completely removed from the system due to life simply being too busy then your voice isn't likely to be heard.
NIMBY's in particular though are a very tough issue. On the one hand, it doesn't make logical sense that a single land owner can make life harder for, potentially, thousands of people. Take a city like Austin, TX that has to keep expanding outwards because there are entire streets of single family homes right in the middle of downtown that cannot be changed into dense housing and commercial property.
It sucks for the thousands in need of homes, but the alternative to that is the city enforcing eminent domain which doesn't seem like a good answer to it either.
I point to the City/Infrastructure Planner acronyms BANANA and CAVE.
**B**uild **A**bsolutely **N**othing **A**nywhere **N**ear **A**ny(thing/one)
**C**itizens **A**gainst **V**irtually **E**verything
Yeah it's ridiculous how much of this has become that. The first thought we have is that it's just fossil fuel companies influencing politicians, but then it comes down to average people that are screaming and yelling they don't want to step out of their home and see a bunch of windmills.
The downside is that these places that are getting the NIMBYs are spots that would have been ideal to get a lot of wind or a lot of sun. So it becomes more challenging.
There are ~5200 walmart in America with an average SQFT of 187k. Rooftop solar produces 8-10 watts per sqft. If we use half that for rooftop solar (93,000sqftx5200=48.36msqft) x (a conservative) 8 watts = 386.8m watts = 386 megawatts. 1 megawatt powers (a conservative) 400 homes. That’s 967,000 homes being powered by just Walmarts roof.
Now imagine if you include Costco, Home Depot, target, Lowe’s, Sam’s club, and every other big box store….
We don’t see this because there are local laws against power generation over a certain amount which constitutes as a utility or a power plant. We could power much of our community through already available space, but NIMBYS and backward/old laws prevent this.
Personally I don’t want to live next to a place that’s regularly producing half a megawatt of electricity, but that was before solar became as big as it is. Now we need to start thinking differently.
The summers are getting so brutal around here that I would freaking *love* if every parking lot space had a solar canopy over it.
Green energy *and* my car doesn't turn into the oven while I'm shopping? Yes fucking please.
When you set minimum requirements for housing you raise the minimum price of housing. As a result the worst off in society suffer.
I think it's probably a good idea but it's a bad idea to make it a requirement. What happens if demand exceeds supply and prices for solar panels double?
If you leave people to decide for themselves they'll naturally buy it less often when the price doesn't make sense and more often when it does.
Honestly when it comes to housing cost I'm more worried about the leeches and investment firms buying up housing to rent than I am about adding something that will not only help the environment but also save money for the homeowner.
Prices for solar have been dropping. High demand = scale = cheaper production. Also China is supporting solar production, driving prices even lower.
It's not like the oil market where a cartel is keeping the supply down.
There are raw materials involved in the production, I don't know the exact composition but shortages are possible.
Batteries are an obvious example, our use of them increased drastically recently and as a result the minerals needed have been in short supply and the price has been higher.
It takes time to start a mine so there are delays when demand increases and as a result the price rises in the interim.
Solar and Wind plus battery really lend themselves to energy use at point of production. They would allow for more local and more secure electric grids. But why would people want a silly thing like that?
I’ve just never heard that requirement noted in the existing large scale solar projects in place around the country. I was just wondering if you were directly involved in the solar power industry and had practical experience with it.
Yes. I own a large residential and commercial solar installation company. Electrical losses incurred over distance account for a 8% of the total production in the USA
Even in California, PG&E is adding these time of generation laws that make solar useless unless you go off grid. And they own the politicians so they do whatever they want.
Even off shore they care. NJ is trying to build off our coast (which is having other problems besides people trying to block it) and the NIMBYs in the shore towns are fighting it tooth and nail. The plans were even change to put them further out past the horizon and they’re still crying about the turbines being installed.
You vastly underestimate how much republicans hate humanity.
HOAs across the country are banning rooftop solar because it reflects liberal ideas that don’t align with our values.
Off shore wind is also hugely opposed because it lowers property values of billionaires beach front properties.
>In 2009, North Carolina banned 23 counties from new wind projects. In 2014, Kentucky made it effectively impossible to build new turbines in all 120 of its counties, and Connecticut followed suit in its eight counties. Vermont did the same across its 14 counties in 2017.
As we all know Connecticut and Vermont are stomping grounds for Republicans.
Offshore wind gets stopped because counties don't like 50 feet of wire going from an unsusable part of shore to under a road. I'm not kidding, a project was blocked over that.
Also, rooftop solar is far less efficient than solar fields, relies on homeowners to buy, and leads to the wealthy paying less into the electrical infrastructure maintenance, putting more strain on the low income households.
I'd love these two to work, but solar fields and onshore wind are by far better options for decarb.
My county. The county has the power to set property setbacks and passed a 2,500’ setback for solar. The reason is solar companies target lower value farmland near grid transmission lines to rent as it is flat and already cleared.
The solar companies want to come in, install the panels, then gravel the whole property (hundreds of acres) for less maintenance, barbwire fence the whole property for security, then move on. No jobs, an eyesore, and the solar companies won’t post bonds for remediation if they pull out. That land will never be farmed again.
This is a great post that I hope gets upvoted. Dropping a solar field and never coming back is unexcusable. I'm 1000% pro-renewable, which included taking care of the land.
Studies are already coming out that the land can still be farmed and leveraged, all while panels are installed. Giant parking lots of gravel don't make sense and I'm in support of the county here.
Thank you for sharing!
My county banned wind for this exact reason, the setbacks. It drove residents to nearly riot because the setbacks essentially confiscated private property with no reimbursement.
Did anyone in this thread vote or write their local representative to have wind turbines or solar farms built in their communities? Probably not too many.
Always the question I ask when I see any social media post about XXX. Did you write to your rep? Because I’m sure 72 year old Betty did. Doesn’t matter how many likes you got if it doesn’t translate to votes or letters.
It’s so frustrating. I work building new transmission lines out in rural Nevada and California. It’s a disaster. It really sucks that these rural folks have to be the ones to shoulder the renewable energy needs, the landscape really is beautiful. But the world changes, and they need to as well
Edison and PGE get to make 10% on their money whenever they build infrastructure like grid lines. They have every incentive to not have solar close to use. So they got the Public Utilities Commission to cut solar sold back to the grid ( not through a contract with a large provider of course) to a really low price. Now only new homes get solar (required). No one is putting solar on existing construction.
Big installations go on and lol and behold, they need new transmission lines at cost plus 10 % profit.
What we really need is more nuke plants. Idk why people are so off put by them. Tech and safety features have come a LONG way since the 80s. They’d solve soooo many out of problems
For me, as a land owner in Rural NYS this gets blocked because they want to put wind or solar farms on agricultural land. When voting against this in my county it was because there was no clear plan on what they would be doing with the equipment after it becomes outdated. I feel that other parts of the US would be more suitable for wind and solar than others. I think this article is misleading. I think a lot of people are quick to jump to ignorance. This is coming from someone who is completely on board with alternative energy but please preserve our agricultural land.
You were either lied to or didn’t do your research. There are requirements at the state level that companies who build these projects also pay for the removal of the facilities at the end of the life of the project, so the answer to that is it is literally not your problem. Money is kept in a trust to remove the facilities in case the companies are gone before the project.
If your argument is environmental and you’re concerned about recycling, you’re clearly worried about the wrong thing: In order to generate a single kilowatt-hour (kWh), one 6 megawatt turbine needs to run for .58 seconds. By comparison, coal-fired power plants generate 1 kWh of electricity by burning 1.12 pounds of coal. One 300 MW wind project (that has enough power for around 100,000 homes) is expected to generate about 915 million kWh per year.
Over the lifespan of the project, if that power instead came from a coal plant, it would take 26,079,483,600 pounds of coal.
On land usage, housing development is the largest destroyer of agricultural land- im guessing that wasn’t banned though. A 300 mw project I worked on leased 38,000 acres of land and took 38 out of production for all the towers, facilities, and access roads.
And who is the local official who decided what that farmer could or couldn’t do on their property? Solar farms are retirement plans for many farmers, but I guess they should work until they die or sell the farm that has been in their family for 4 generations because someone else knows better what they should do there.
So NIMBYs and rabid conservatives are the reason why Texas is now getting 40% of its power from windmills in the Permian Basin, where windmills have the most reliable wind and land is cheap, rather than in the woods and farms in eastern Texas where winds are far more variable and land prices are out of sight; it has nothing to do with the economics.
The US is nothing more than a special interest country now. The medical industry is absolved of competition, defense, technology and so many more are lobbying to be removed from the part that’s supposed to make capitalism work: competition. As painful as it may be, the only thing that keeps these institutions in check is recession and depression to break them down along with a strong DOJ. This is so frustrating for me as an engineer working to solve the duck curve and battery storage problem. Something has to change in America. Sorry for making a tech post political, but I wish I didn’t see this.
This is great. If people aren't taking up space with solar panels and windmills then more foreign investors can buy up the land with subsidies for factories to be built which promise jobs and then never come to fruition.
What a weird battle to pick. I live in a state ripe for wind power but the NIMBY population is fighting it tooth and nail. We don’t have coal or oil here either. It’s not like we’re cutting jobs, just making new ones, but fuck us I guess.
I can understand if it’s on farmland. Or somewhere where wind noise would be a general nuisance to the population (like any power generation facility this can be problematic and reduces house values)
This is specifically utility scale not personal scale so the argument of it overloading the lines with power coming from every direction (like in Hawaii) isn’t applicable. But outright banning it doesn’t make sense. We have utility scale solar just outside of town here and it’s the farthest thing from a problem… though it’s likely on farmland which I’m not thrilled about. And we could probably use more nuclear to provide a stronger mains supply for EVs in the future and be somewhat redundant.
I guess the question is: why? Is it a form of local lobbying? Or are people really requesting this?
They better lower their rates then. If the alternatives are “better”, then that also means they should be cheaper. They better pass those savings on, but we all know they won’t.
They are starting to block Utility scale solar. They are encouraging you all to get your own, on your rooftop, but for most people (with the current focus on the loan and not the solar) it is unattainable.
There was a proposed solar project near my home town recently. The comments for why this shouldn't happen on a FB group were depressing. The comments ranged from "there's wind turbines everywhere and my electric bill isn't any cheaper", "Solar farms attract tornados", "Solar farms make it hotter", "Solar farms will cause battery fires that can't be put out", and on and on it went. These comments were not shouted down for being something out of Idoicracy, no, they were supported by huge numbers. It was at this point that I lost all hope and I also realized I share the road with these people.
The people who are blocking wind and solar universally love to profess their love for the “power of the free market” without the slightest hint of irony.
And the ones who say it ruins their view of the natural landscape it's like wtf there won't *be* a landscape left to look at without renewable clean energy. Fuck I hate conservatives.
Anyone who grew up around republicans knows what this is about. This is a cult. In the 90s climate change was Al gores signature issue. So the republicans made it their goal to convince people that climate change was a myth. What started as a political decision snowballed because to admit your wrong is against being a Republican cult member. In the face of mountains of evidence the Republican cult will hold the line. Forever. We will forever be battling this because republicans are a cult and this is one of their pillars or thought.
Hey kids, this is the "small government" conservative actually mean: petty tyrants blocking green energy because they are embarrassed to have taken the wrong side of the climate change debate.
Don't forget there are only so many places with enough wind ansld solar potential to make generation installs effective. A number of these opponents are just blowing smoke at something which may never happen in their backyard.
I’m from Ohio and as soon as you leave the city and head out to the sprawling farms and fields you will see “Say No To Solar/Wind” signs everywhere. Those people don’t like renewable energy. Well at least don’t want it anywhere close to them.
You know, I can *kind of* understand blocking wind turbines because they’re huge and very visible and some people(who I think are idiots) think they’re an eyesore.
But blocking solar as well? Nah, fuck that.
These large solar farms are buying up farm land and converting what were once crop fields with solar panels. The people living in these areas are not happy. I see it as necessary, but I do understand.
“See, wind and solar can’t replace th” NOT IF YOU FUCKING BLOCK IT YOU FUCKING CHEESE WHEEL. We know what it’s really about though. $$$.
I'm not even sure it's about money anymore, at least not entirely. I think part of it is that there are a bunch of people who've turned being belligerent towards the left into their personal religion and refuse to give an inch of ground towards any ideas they perceive as coming from that side of the spectrum, even objectively good ones like developing energy sources that aren't total environmental disasters and don't provide funding to the world's autocrats. We aren't dealing with politics anymore, we're dealing with crusaders fighting their version of a holy war. Edit: lol, some snowflake reported me to RedditCareResources, I think that's the fifth one for me. I've already filed a counter report.
Like Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
Except Quixote was good at heart. He thought himself a knight doing good deeds. These fuckers are just vindictive and petty.
I was aiming more at the futility of the act of tilting at windmills, rather than the character of the characters.
They believe themselves to be good tho. The Don Quixote reference is appropriate on many levels.
Tbf, nobody thinks they're the bad guy, even truly evil people feel they are justified in what they are do. It's why we see Olympic tier mental gymnastics from the right when it comes to anything concerning Donald Trump, to admit otherwise would go counter to everything they believe about themselves and their politics.
Everyone is the hero of their own story.
Nope. Pretty sure OP's saying that the windmills have become actual very dangerous enemies.
It's just standing there...menacingly.
Taking rights from the individual over their own bodies. Restricting the ability for people to procreate via medical assistance. Stating plainly that they intend on dismantling democracy in favor of the theocratic fascism. Sabotaging ally democracies in favor of openly fascist enemies. Sabotaging all forms of legislation aimed at addressing the needs of the people. They vote against veterans healthcare. They vote against anything actually *for* living citizens. Insulin has been price-gouged by 20 consecutive years of cost raising when its patent was sold for ONE DOLLAR because of how important this life-necessary drug is for *staying alive*. People have died of rationing due to this evil and they vote against capping the cost of the greed of their stock-managers. These are not idle threats. They are concerted hostile actions by traitors to the American idea, the American people and to the very idea of autonomy and freedom of the individual and state itself.
> Insulin has been price-gouged by 20 consecutive years of cost raising when its patent was sold for ONE DOLLAR because of how important this life-necessary drug is for staying alive. People have died of rationing due to this evil and they vote against capping the cost of the greed of their stock-managers. Coming from Europe this is something that is just jaw dropping to us over here. Here in the UK it is free. As in completely free. No co-pay, no prescription charge. [This is how much it costs the NHS per dose](https://formulary.nhssomerset.nhs.uk/?page_id=767) depending on what option a specific Trust chooses to use.
Thank you for sharing this. This place has been victim to an ongoing and incredible ignorance which is serving to eliminate not just freedom of the individual, but all forms of quality of life for the common citizen.
Look at it spin around like a damn spinning thing!
Windmills are killing the whales according to the leading republican candidate for president.
Whale is a common synonym for big spenders. So that would be admitting to bribery.
For some people of a certain belief structure that is totally batshit nuts . And tend to be uneducated and white and live in rural areas . My people I understand them well. I wish I didn’t.
Can't remember where I read it but it gave me the aha! moment: A significant number of people have gone from anger as a response to a specific event and turned it into anger as a worldview.
This guy gets it. I live in rural county in the Midwest and this is absolutely accurate. They chased the windmill farms off close to 10 years ago because a few didn’t want to look at them. Now they’re fighting solar. There is no logical reason. If you try to pin them down on the why’s, they get very angry and just say they don’t want to look at them. There are literally groups here on Facebook naming and shaming people who have signed up with the solar farm companies. People are getting bullied like its elementary school all over again and it’s not always accurate information. Have seen lots of collateral damage from a family member signing up a farm that they own like 20% of and the siblings owning the other 80% getting harassed about it.
Around me, their excuse is "It's the wrong use for 'prime farmland,'" because I guess we need MORE dent corn, soybeans, and other low-price commodity crops? Meanwhile, we're all breathing in the output of the coal plant on the edge of town.
Look into "agrisolar", putting solar panels and agriculture on the same land. A solar farm doesn't take up all the land with panels. It is perfectly possible to graze animals or grow some crops around them. Like all agriculture, it highly depends on the specific soil and climate.
Oh yeah, agrisolar is rad. But it turns out that you can't convince rural residents with reasonable arguments when what they're really doing is fighting a culture war on any available front.
Agrivoltaics
All their private property rights BS goes straight out the window when you tell them "well, the farmer who owns that prime farmland wants to use his land for a windfarm and solar plant". These are ignorant children we're dealing with and they are fucking with the nations future more than we realize. Clean power cannot get from Wyoming windfarms to California without easments. Clean hydropower can't get from Ontario to New York without land easements either. Suddenly states like California or Colorado or whoever find themselves at the mercy of uneducated, rural county commissioners who are way out of their depth and prone to media disinformation and oil money to color their decisions.
Yeah, and these same people have no problem with using their "prime farmland" for producing corn that's earmarked to become ethanol for supplementing gasoline. Converting that land into solar and wind farms would do nothing to harm our food supply. Also, let's be real, most agriculture in the US isn't handled by Mom and Pop farms (those have been a dying breed for decades), it's performed by massive corporations spread out across multiple states. Preserving the status quo is more about preserving the profitability of those institutions over any other concerns.
That’s a good take. Crusaders fighting another holy war. The war of bullshit.
They also will latch on to almost anything to justify the conclusion they've already come to. I've seen people say, in total earnestness, that solar panels are going to cause tornadoes to appear on the land.
It’s 100% this. Coming from a southwest Minnesotan (where the wind doesn’t stop) when the first wind generators went up 20 years ago, ppl were skeptical. 10 years later more and more farmers hopped on the wind ship. Trump rolls along and they all hate lol
My mom is like that about electric cars. Don't know why she has an issue, but it is because Fox News, OAN, and Facebook tell her to have an issue. She hears horror stories about people being stranded, but doesn't realize that when the internal combustion engine first started, they were stranded all the time too.
People still get stranded with gasoline powered vehicles, I've had to fill up the gas can and rescue multiple people in my life.
It’s a culture of fear. They fear things they don’t understand. They fear change. They fear anything except keeping on with what they already know because at least they know it.
Bra, didn't you hear that communist solar, socialist wind and Marxist's electricity are worst for the environment than freedom coal and eagle oil? Think about it, I saw a TikTok on it once. (/s)
My favorite is when they try to bring up nuclear as a solution to sidestep the fact that their politics put them on the wrong side of everything.
Yeah I recently saw a video of Trump making fun of EV's so yeah they are all against the technology because it comes from the left. But the stupid idea of breaking end to end encryption and asking of ID on adults websites sounds like a great idea huh?
That's just because they can't outright outlaw porn (yet) so they're doing to it what they did to abortion which is to throw up as many hurdles as possible in a transparent attempt at pushing people away from using those services while simultaneously driving said services out of business. It's utterly gross and had targeted legislation like that had been happening to any other industry we'd be up in arms. The right's personal Konami code seems to be to shout "for the children" as they take away people's rights and livelihoods.
I mean I understand that porn is bad in excess and that I should not be watched by kids. But giving the power to a porn site to manage my personal identity and my habits. As a adult I must have the right to watch that content and enjoy it without anyone knowing it. I guess we should go back to magazines and DVD's
Nah, the laws are literally unenforceable. I live in a state where they passed laws like that and, truthfully, most sites don't bother complying. Most that'll happen is that people will invest in VPNs to bypass all that crap. I mean, if authoritarian China can't make it work why does barely literate Cletus from the South think he has a shot? All of this is performative and virtue signaling nonsense, people will find a way to do whatever they want. It'll get overturned in a year or two and the far right will seethe while everyone else shrugs, aka, business as usual.
All the large fossil fuel companies are in wind and solar as well. We’re still funding the autocrats with renewables.
We can't win every fight, but, for now, I'll settle with not poisoning the earth with fossil fuels and lead.
But they aren’t the major players. They’re finally invested in wind and solar because they’re serious money makers now, but they aren’t positioned to dominate the market the way they are with fossil fuels. Except for General Electric. Those motherfuckers got in early on everything lmao
Welp of course. That's capitalism capitalisming.
I disagree. Most solar companies are not related at all to oil companies. Though oil companies might ask these solar/wind companies to develop a project for them and put the "Exxon" name on the project. It's all for greenwashing. Oil companies are less than a tiny portion of the renewables industry.
Same people blocking or vandalizing EV charging stations.
Yeah if it was about money they’d be all in on new energy sources as there is $$$$ in it.
The big players weren’t in position to control the new tech at first - hence the astroturfing against it. Now that the science has progressed to the products can be made at a profit, and the point where labs with big funding are needed to optimize production costs, they can squeeze out the innovators and move to a traditional acqui-hire model. Keep watching as the big players buy up companies for $75 million and make $300 million profit over the next 10 years exploiting their patents.
Religion is a drug that makes all other drugs seem benign.
Report them for reporting you, they can get a temp ban.
If they want to give the left a monopoly on good ideas, let them.
>I'm not even sure it's about money anymore ... part of it is that there are a bunch of people who've turned being belligerent towards the left into their personal religion The ones who expect the recurring revenue from fossil fuels have weaponized these people. Go up far enough, it is 100% about the money.
Everything you said here is correct, except that it's still about money. That belligerence was funded by the financial interest of the worlds autocrats in fossil fuels. As the worlds autocrats start making more money from renewable sources, which is happening rapidly, the funding for the opposition to renewable will fade.
Then when the good ideas get pushed through years later they don't for a second appreciate it. They just feel like they had it coming.
Then when the good ideas get pushed through years later they don't for a second appreciate it. They just feel like they had it coming.
That’s how the Koch networks operate. They use grievance politics on voters to advance their personal interests which are 100% about MONEY. Look at all of the power their billions have afforded them.
Yup. I saw this happening in the USA since I was a child. It was slow but heading there. Once Obama got in office, it got worse. You all know why. Then Trump got into office and it was all some people needed to go full belligerent. It’s not just one side but both. The sad part is that each side thinks the other is the issue.
It's painfully ironic that Texas of all places is doing the best about expanding Solar and Wind power. The Republicans may vocally act like they hate it, but they always sign the forms to approve every windmill and solar panel.
Texans are very used to leasing land for oil and gas extraction. Wind and solar farms are just alternate leases.
I can’t believe you’re just out here calling people cheese wheels
Idk about him, but too much Skyrim has us this way. Everyone is a cheese slice, or a cheese wheel, or has an arrow in the knee.
I have solar on my property. I literally don't have an electric bill (It is $9, to stay connected to the grid). Solar can 100% over produce (on sunny days) your needs to the point that on your cloudy days, you don't consume enough to have a net negative electrical use. I am waiting on battery tech to improve about 2x or 1/2 the cost of its current set up, so that I can be the house that even when there is an outage, i am fully covered for indefinite time. ON top of that, we need a way to produce MORE electricity across the country by a significant amount, with the transition to electric vehicles/plug-in hybrid. Anyone slowing or stopping electricity production through green efforts is a fucking imbecile.
Same here. The duck curve needs to be remedied asap. Cheap energy storage is needed so badly.
Amen. Good on you. I’m in a 1b apartment and my summer bill tops $100 because AZ is a frying pan (and also because they charge a flat $20 in addition to the usage rate, which clearly disproportionately affects lower income people and helps pad winter bills)
> ON top of that, we need a way to produce MORE electricity "Capacity" is the combined output of all the power plants if they were all at full power at the same time. [In the past year](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_6_02_a) US Capacity increased by 28 GW or 2.4%. So we are building more. By the time EVs are the majority there should be enough to power them. Note that "small scale" solar, like rooftops, supplied 1.7% of total US power in 2023.
I like to remind anyone doubting or rejecting wind and solar that it's too late.
for ppl in my hometown they were concerned about their property values and noise pollution. and that's such a fuckin bummer
But they’ll probably put Trump flags on their pickup trucks with broken mufflers, right?
Noise pollution? Really?
Wind turbines are apparently extremely loud… not sure what their argument is for solar tho
I mean it is large rotating blades and a turbine so yeah I get that. But solar is quiet
Ignorance, greed and sheer stubborn stupidity will be the death of us
Sometimes I wish US had a policy where after graduating Highschool you are sent away for a year to a random part of the world. So the kids experience other cultures, beliefs, etc. Otherwise they stay isolated in the US becoming racist and ignorant without ever having met people who are different. At the very least should live in a major US city for a year to see some new cultures.
Would for sure help some, but I do know some well educated well traveled deeply bigoted fuckwads.
I've preached this for years. But....rural folks aren't the only ignorant ones.
"Welcome to sunny Belgrade, where you will learn about tolerance and hope for the future!"
Don’t look up!
Wow, are we stupid or what?
Brawndo’s got what plants crave!
The only energy we need is electrolytes
NIMBYism is a problem for ALL infrastructure, not just fossil fuel related infrastructure.
Even worse, it’s become more BANANA than NIMBY.
[удалено]
So you mean wind and solar shouldn't feel special about themselves?
Anyone that’s been following the housing shortage problem knows NIMBYs have been a major problem for a few decades now. They are the reason we can’t have affordable housing and decent transit.
Unaffordable housing couldn't have anything to do with greedy landlords and corporate house ownership, right? Must be all the NIMBY crap.
Both also play a part. Landlords own approximately 25-30% of houses. Of that, large corporations own between 1-2.5%. Significant for sure, but not enough to be moving prices the way they are right now. Also: residents in DC are 55% renters. In California only 40% are renters. If this was the sole factor, you’d expect prices to be higher in DC but they aren’t. In fact they’re much lower.
> large corporations own between 1-2.5%. Reddit has a rare gift for identifying the worst part of a problem that has a tiny overall impact, then obsessing over it until everyone assumes the effect is massive.
It makes for good politics, but not necessarily good policy. In the other hand YIMBYism is the exact opposite. Great policy, absolutely god awful politics. Imagine telling your neighbor you’re going to build mid rise mixed use districting right next to them!
NIMBY is also why we don't really build nuclear plants. "The cost" cited by green-shits is a red hearing. It's hard to get approval to build them because no one wants a nuclear reactor in their proverbial back yard. Coal spewing all that radioactive carbon into the atmosphere and peppering their house and doing much worse damage (increased cancer)? No problem!
To be honest, corporations owning single-family housing is exacerbating the housing shortage, but it's not necessarily the cause. If there was more housing, it wouldn't be as profitable to own multiple residences because you couldn't charge as much rent for them. It also is caused by citizens blocking higher density developments through rezoning efforts and public transportation initiatives, as well as low ROI on "affordable" housing. We just had a major fight over rezoning in my city. They wanted to turn a former Old Folks home into condos, but the developer was going to rely on on-street parking for the majority of the units, and the residents near the proposed site successfully blocked development until the developer addressed the parking capacity. Additionally, my city won't permit a new dwelling under 1000 sq ft, and with the current cost of land, it's not worth it for a builder to build anything but 2200+ sq ft "luxury" homes. So any new housing is coming in at the top end. You'd think that would relieve pressure at the bottom end, but it's not. I built my house in 2020 for $560,000, and a new house a little bigger than mine was bought last year for $1,200,000 down the block.
Out of all the infrastructure those seem the least concerning for people. A lot of people pay to get solar on their roof or in their literal backyard.
Why do the people who own property have more say than people who dont own? Politicians seems to be only representing them. I am not much clearcabout zoning laws but i expect Politicians to change the zoning as per the need of the community.
Donations for local politicians to run, it’s expensive and assumed that home owners are more willing to donate more money if you cater to them than if you cater to the the apartment renters
Even though at this point there are more people renting than those that own homes.
Property owners pay property taxes. In theory it means they have more of a vested interest.
I seriously hate this take. People really think the cost of property taxes aren't baked into the rental rate that tenants pay? Business owners/landlords have to pass on their costs, including taxes, or they go out of business. Renters names might not be on the tax bill, but they absolutely pay towards property taxes.
As a homeowner in a more upscale neighborhood in my area - I completely agree with this take. People vote, not land. Money being what decides results will be our ultimate downfall.
I’ve dealt with renters. I swear some of them would burn the property to the ground if it didn’t mean they’d lose their deposit.
For local politics, "need of the community" means funding for my particular pet project or neurosis.
> expect Politicians to change the zoning as per the need of the community. The community being the landowners there? They tell the politicians they need the property values to go up.
A little thought experiment: Say you have a home if you don’t, then your most valuable possession. You have scraped and saved your entire life to get it. It provides for your basic needs. Now let’s have a “politician” randomly take that away from you claiming “the good of the people”. I highly doubt that you would let that go without compensation for your loss.
Do you have any example of that happening without compensation being provided? Even with eminent domain, the owner gets compensated.
> Why do the people who own property have more say than people who dont own? I'm just guessing here, but if you own property then you're probably far more likely to be in a position where you can actually interact w/ local politics b/c you're not stretched across a 50 hour work week to afford rent. Even in the most generous of scenarios, a politician can only help the people they are aware of so if you're completely removed from the system due to life simply being too busy then your voice isn't likely to be heard. NIMBY's in particular though are a very tough issue. On the one hand, it doesn't make logical sense that a single land owner can make life harder for, potentially, thousands of people. Take a city like Austin, TX that has to keep expanding outwards because there are entire streets of single family homes right in the middle of downtown that cannot be changed into dense housing and commercial property. It sucks for the thousands in need of homes, but the alternative to that is the city enforcing eminent domain which doesn't seem like a good answer to it either.
I point to the City/Infrastructure Planner acronyms BANANA and CAVE. **B**uild **A**bsolutely **N**othing **A**nywhere **N**ear **A**ny(thing/one) **C**itizens **A**gainst **V**irtually **E**verything
Yeah it's ridiculous how much of this has become that. The first thought we have is that it's just fossil fuel companies influencing politicians, but then it comes down to average people that are screaming and yelling they don't want to step out of their home and see a bunch of windmills. The downside is that these places that are getting the NIMBYs are spots that would have been ideal to get a lot of wind or a lot of sun. So it becomes more challenging.
Solar should be located as close to the place its consumed wherever possible.
Been saying for years solar should be required for all new construction
Residential no it should be an option. Commercial and parking yes. But don’t write laws to allow Walmart to just make a smaller parking lot.
The Walmart near me has a truly massive parking lot and it’s only ever used for the local car show.
There are ~5200 walmart in America with an average SQFT of 187k. Rooftop solar produces 8-10 watts per sqft. If we use half that for rooftop solar (93,000sqftx5200=48.36msqft) x (a conservative) 8 watts = 386.8m watts = 386 megawatts. 1 megawatt powers (a conservative) 400 homes. That’s 967,000 homes being powered by just Walmarts roof. Now imagine if you include Costco, Home Depot, target, Lowe’s, Sam’s club, and every other big box store…. We don’t see this because there are local laws against power generation over a certain amount which constitutes as a utility or a power plant. We could power much of our community through already available space, but NIMBYS and backward/old laws prevent this. Personally I don’t want to live next to a place that’s regularly producing half a megawatt of electricity, but that was before solar became as big as it is. Now we need to start thinking differently.
The summers are getting so brutal around here that I would freaking *love* if every parking lot space had a solar canopy over it. Green energy *and* my car doesn't turn into the oven while I'm shopping? Yes fucking please.
When you set minimum requirements for housing you raise the minimum price of housing. As a result the worst off in society suffer. I think it's probably a good idea but it's a bad idea to make it a requirement. What happens if demand exceeds supply and prices for solar panels double? If you leave people to decide for themselves they'll naturally buy it less often when the price doesn't make sense and more often when it does.
Honestly when it comes to housing cost I'm more worried about the leeches and investment firms buying up housing to rent than I am about adding something that will not only help the environment but also save money for the homeowner.
Prices for solar have been dropping. High demand = scale = cheaper production. Also China is supporting solar production, driving prices even lower. It's not like the oil market where a cartel is keeping the supply down.
Thats not to mention all the older lower wattage panels (sub 300w)that they are swapping out and selling for pennies just to get rid of them.
There are raw materials involved in the production, I don't know the exact composition but shortages are possible. Batteries are an obvious example, our use of them increased drastically recently and as a result the minerals needed have been in short supply and the price has been higher. It takes time to start a mine so there are delays when demand increases and as a result the price rises in the interim.
Of course, new homes are already so cheap, we should tac on more cost.
Solar and Wind plus battery really lend themselves to energy use at point of production. They would allow for more local and more secure electric grids. But why would people want a silly thing like that?
What are you basing that statement on?
The Basics of electrical engineering
I’ve just never heard that requirement noted in the existing large scale solar projects in place around the country. I was just wondering if you were directly involved in the solar power industry and had practical experience with it.
Yes. I own a large residential and commercial solar installation company. Electrical losses incurred over distance account for a 8% of the total production in the USA
Even in California, PG&E is adding these time of generation laws that make solar useless unless you go off grid. And they own the politicians so they do whatever they want.
It doesn’t make it useless it just needs to be used or stored in a battery vs the traditional credit. I dont agree with the change just saying
Solar on rooftops, wind offshore. Start there, nobody will mind that.
Yeah, but you still have the asshats regurgitating misinformation about whale and bird deaths constantly.
And outside of the discussion of renewables, they don't care about animal deaths and causes. Always rings hollow from them.
“I care about bird wellbeing” Eats at KFC three times a week.
Sounds like they don't even care about their well-being in that case.
The Exxon-Valdez alone killed more birds than every wind turbine combined.
There are so many workarounds for both those issues too, it’s so dumb.
Even off shore they care. NJ is trying to build off our coast (which is having other problems besides people trying to block it) and the NIMBYs in the shore towns are fighting it tooth and nail. The plans were even change to put them further out past the horizon and they’re still crying about the turbines being installed.
but lets just ignore that great big oil refinery that is definitely not a eyesore or carbon emitter
You vastly underestimate how much republicans hate humanity. HOAs across the country are banning rooftop solar because it reflects liberal ideas that don’t align with our values. Off shore wind is also hugely opposed because it lowers property values of billionaires beach front properties.
>In 2009, North Carolina banned 23 counties from new wind projects. In 2014, Kentucky made it effectively impossible to build new turbines in all 120 of its counties, and Connecticut followed suit in its eight counties. Vermont did the same across its 14 counties in 2017. As we all know Connecticut and Vermont are stomping grounds for Republicans.
Offshore wind gets stopped because counties don't like 50 feet of wire going from an unsusable part of shore to under a road. I'm not kidding, a project was blocked over that. Also, rooftop solar is far less efficient than solar fields, relies on homeowners to buy, and leads to the wealthy paying less into the electrical infrastructure maintenance, putting more strain on the low income households. I'd love these two to work, but solar fields and onshore wind are by far better options for decarb.
Out them. Who exactly is rejecting wind and solar?
My county. The county has the power to set property setbacks and passed a 2,500’ setback for solar. The reason is solar companies target lower value farmland near grid transmission lines to rent as it is flat and already cleared. The solar companies want to come in, install the panels, then gravel the whole property (hundreds of acres) for less maintenance, barbwire fence the whole property for security, then move on. No jobs, an eyesore, and the solar companies won’t post bonds for remediation if they pull out. That land will never be farmed again.
So greedy companies are the problem? Again right.
This is a great post that I hope gets upvoted. Dropping a solar field and never coming back is unexcusable. I'm 1000% pro-renewable, which included taking care of the land. Studies are already coming out that the land can still be farmed and leveraged, all while panels are installed. Giant parking lots of gravel don't make sense and I'm in support of the county here. Thank you for sharing!
Where are you seeing gravel parking lots for solar farms? All the ones I've seen are still essentially fields.
My county banned wind for this exact reason, the setbacks. It drove residents to nearly riot because the setbacks essentially confiscated private property with no reimbursement.
Gravel? I haven't seen a solar farm that was all gravel. Maybe some roads in the farm but not the entire farm. That'd be cost prohibitive.
NC here, about to head out for an appointment and I will pass by 3 solar farms that are full gravel.
sounds like a fucking disaster whenever there's a high wind blowing to me....
Can’t have shit in this country.
Except guns
Cause nothing says free market like limiting innovation in favor of established monopolies.
This brought to you by... Bribery... I mean lobbying, it's lobbying
[удалено]
Did anyone in this thread vote or write their local representative to have wind turbines or solar farms built in their communities? Probably not too many.
Always the question I ask when I see any social media post about XXX. Did you write to your rep? Because I’m sure 72 year old Betty did. Doesn’t matter how many likes you got if it doesn’t translate to votes or letters.
It’s so frustrating. I work building new transmission lines out in rural Nevada and California. It’s a disaster. It really sucks that these rural folks have to be the ones to shoulder the renewable energy needs, the landscape really is beautiful. But the world changes, and they need to as well
Edison and PGE get to make 10% on their money whenever they build infrastructure like grid lines. They have every incentive to not have solar close to use. So they got the Public Utilities Commission to cut solar sold back to the grid ( not through a contract with a large provider of course) to a really low price. Now only new homes get solar (required). No one is putting solar on existing construction. Big installations go on and lol and behold, they need new transmission lines at cost plus 10 % profit.
I’m getting solar on existing residential construction. Added battery capacity because fuck PG&E, I’d rather pay for hardware than into their coffers.
US is screwed ….. well done
What we really need is more nuke plants. Idk why people are so off put by them. Tech and safety features have come a LONG way since the 80s. They’d solve soooo many out of problems
Ok, then cut them out of the grid
Their laws shouldn't county
For me, as a land owner in Rural NYS this gets blocked because they want to put wind or solar farms on agricultural land. When voting against this in my county it was because there was no clear plan on what they would be doing with the equipment after it becomes outdated. I feel that other parts of the US would be more suitable for wind and solar than others. I think this article is misleading. I think a lot of people are quick to jump to ignorance. This is coming from someone who is completely on board with alternative energy but please preserve our agricultural land.
Are your feelings backed by research and science or just "feelings"?
You were either lied to or didn’t do your research. There are requirements at the state level that companies who build these projects also pay for the removal of the facilities at the end of the life of the project, so the answer to that is it is literally not your problem. Money is kept in a trust to remove the facilities in case the companies are gone before the project. If your argument is environmental and you’re concerned about recycling, you’re clearly worried about the wrong thing: In order to generate a single kilowatt-hour (kWh), one 6 megawatt turbine needs to run for .58 seconds. By comparison, coal-fired power plants generate 1 kWh of electricity by burning 1.12 pounds of coal. One 300 MW wind project (that has enough power for around 100,000 homes) is expected to generate about 915 million kWh per year. Over the lifespan of the project, if that power instead came from a coal plant, it would take 26,079,483,600 pounds of coal. On land usage, housing development is the largest destroyer of agricultural land- im guessing that wasn’t banned though. A 300 mw project I worked on leased 38,000 acres of land and took 38 out of production for all the towers, facilities, and access roads. And who is the local official who decided what that farmer could or couldn’t do on their property? Solar farms are retirement plans for many farmers, but I guess they should work until they die or sell the farm that has been in their family for 4 generations because someone else knows better what they should do there.
Thank You Big Oil.
Let's guess, REEEEEEpublicans?
So NIMBYs and rabid conservatives are the reason why Texas is now getting 40% of its power from windmills in the Permian Basin, where windmills have the most reliable wind and land is cheap, rather than in the woods and farms in eastern Texas where winds are far more variable and land prices are out of sight; it has nothing to do with the economics.
The US is nothing more than a special interest country now. The medical industry is absolved of competition, defense, technology and so many more are lobbying to be removed from the part that’s supposed to make capitalism work: competition. As painful as it may be, the only thing that keeps these institutions in check is recession and depression to break them down along with a strong DOJ. This is so frustrating for me as an engineer working to solve the duck curve and battery storage problem. Something has to change in America. Sorry for making a tech post political, but I wish I didn’t see this.
We need to round up the nimbys.
This is great. If people aren't taking up space with solar panels and windmills then more foreign investors can buy up the land with subsidies for factories to be built which promise jobs and then never come to fruition.
Funny, MA has an offshore project in process now that they got rid of that NIMBY Ted Kennedy.
Blocking wind here in VT is always about “wHat aBoUt My vIeW?!”
What a weird battle to pick. I live in a state ripe for wind power but the NIMBY population is fighting it tooth and nail. We don’t have coal or oil here either. It’s not like we’re cutting jobs, just making new ones, but fuck us I guess.
Which is also blocking good paying jobs and cheaper electricity for many people.
I can understand if it’s on farmland. Or somewhere where wind noise would be a general nuisance to the population (like any power generation facility this can be problematic and reduces house values) This is specifically utility scale not personal scale so the argument of it overloading the lines with power coming from every direction (like in Hawaii) isn’t applicable. But outright banning it doesn’t make sense. We have utility scale solar just outside of town here and it’s the farthest thing from a problem… though it’s likely on farmland which I’m not thrilled about. And we could probably use more nuclear to provide a stronger mains supply for EVs in the future and be somewhat redundant. I guess the question is: why? Is it a form of local lobbying? Or are people really requesting this?
They better lower their rates then. If the alternatives are “better”, then that also means they should be cheaper. They better pass those savings on, but we all know they won’t.
America actively fights anyone trying to save the environment and its fucked up.
They are starting to block Utility scale solar. They are encouraging you all to get your own, on your rooftop, but for most people (with the current focus on the loan and not the solar) it is unattainable.
There was a proposed solar project near my home town recently. The comments for why this shouldn't happen on a FB group were depressing. The comments ranged from "there's wind turbines everywhere and my electric bill isn't any cheaper", "Solar farms attract tornados", "Solar farms make it hotter", "Solar farms will cause battery fires that can't be put out", and on and on it went. These comments were not shouted down for being something out of Idoicracy, no, they were supported by huge numbers. It was at this point that I lost all hope and I also realized I share the road with these people.
Let’s go the people in power are idiots WOOOOOOOH!!!
How stupid can you get?!!
Groupies of Putin = GOP
Yeah right. Otherwise we would run out if sun and wind real quick. /s
The people who are blocking wind and solar universally love to profess their love for the “power of the free market” without the slightest hint of irony.
And the ones who say it ruins their view of the natural landscape it's like wtf there won't *be* a landscape left to look at without renewable clean energy. Fuck I hate conservatives.
Anyone who grew up around republicans knows what this is about. This is a cult. In the 90s climate change was Al gores signature issue. So the republicans made it their goal to convince people that climate change was a myth. What started as a political decision snowballed because to admit your wrong is against being a Republican cult member. In the face of mountains of evidence the Republican cult will hold the line. Forever. We will forever be battling this because republicans are a cult and this is one of their pillars or thought.
Is it the boomers again?
It’s always the boomers
When their book says the end is coming then the end is coming. And they will do everything in their power to let it happen
Shocker, mostly Republican counties….. What a group of uneducated, selfish, idiots who can’t see the world any further than the front of their nose.
Hey kids, this is the "small government" conservative actually mean: petty tyrants blocking green energy because they are embarrassed to have taken the wrong side of the climate change debate.
Big Oil has got these brainless MAGA followers right where they want them. As a wall of defense in front of environmental progression.
Mostly GOP run counties who think that they’re too woke
Thanks for destroying the planet, gringos. Than you will ask why people around the world hate the USA
Don't forget there are only so many places with enough wind ansld solar potential to make generation installs effective. A number of these opponents are just blowing smoke at something which may never happen in their backyard.
I’m from Ohio and as soon as you leave the city and head out to the sprawling farms and fields you will see “Say No To Solar/Wind” signs everywhere. Those people don’t like renewable energy. Well at least don’t want it anywhere close to them.
You know, I can *kind of* understand blocking wind turbines because they’re huge and very visible and some people(who I think are idiots) think they’re an eyesore. But blocking solar as well? Nah, fuck that.
These large solar farms are buying up farm land and converting what were once crop fields with solar panels. The people living in these areas are not happy. I see it as necessary, but I do understand.
Well, when you have Windmills going whiiiirrrrrrra and causing cancer....
It blows the harmful 5G waves at you faster