Last week, the Mahoning County Commission, by a vote of 3-0, approved a resolution that bans big solar projects and large “economically significant wind farms” in unincorporated areas of Green Township, Ohio.
According to a November 10 story by Ed Runyan, a reporter for The Vindicator, public input on the measure was “overwhelmingly” in support of the bans, and “over 800 signatures” of people favoring the ban were presented to the commissioners before the vote. [emphasis, links added]
Four days after the vote in Ohio, county commissioners in Harvey County, Kansas, voted unanimously to ban commercial wind and utility-scale solar projects in their county.
The votes in Ohio and Kansas bring the total number of restrictions or rejections of wind and solar in the U.S. to 601.
These rejections, which are cataloged in the Renewable Rejection Database, provide undeniable proof that all across rural America, landowners and policymakers are taking action to protect their neighborhoods from the landscape-destroying, viewshed-ruining, bird- and bat-killing sprawl that comes with Big Wind and Big Solar projects.
Of course, you will not read about these rejections in the New York Times or on National Public Radio. The backlash, which is happening from Maine to Hawaii, doesn’t fit the narrative being peddled by academics at elite universities and climate activists who are hawking 100% renewable energy schemes.
Nor does it fit the agenda of the big banks, big corporations, and big law firms that stand to make staggering sums of money from federal tax credits if more wind and solar projects get built.
But after more than a decade of reporting on the backlash against Big Wind and Big Solar, it’s clear to me that the level of resentment across rural America is rising.
Rural landowners will not be bullied into going along with these massive infrastructure projects. Indeed, the trendline shows more and more rural communities are objecting.
So far this year, there have been 49 rejections of wind energy and 63 for solar.
Last month, after the Board of Adjustment in Dickinson County, Iowa, denied a permit for the proposed Red Rock wind project being pushed by Chicago-based Invenergy, which is controlled by billionaire Michael Polsky, I got an email from Abigail Miles, a resident of Spirit Lake.
Abigail told me that the Red Rock project, which was to have 79 turbines standing more than 500 feet high, was fiercely opposed by residents and that hearings on the project went on for “three very long nights.”
She said the victory over Invenergy was “truly a testament to the people rising up against both a corrupt local government and a multi-billion dollar corporation and with enough resistance (and prayer) we were able to turn the tide. I’m honored to be a part of a community that fought so hard to protect their land.”
There are many reasons why the headlong rush to wind and solar energy is terrible policy.
First among them: We should be building an electric grid that is weather resilient, not weather dependent.
But the most obvious reason why the pursuit of wind and solar energy is a fool’s errand is that those forms of electricity generation require too much land. And no amount of spin will change that fact.
X-energy Layoffs
On Wednesday, the U.S. and U.K. governments announced their intent to triple installed nuclear power capacity globally by 2050.
According to Bloomberg, the countries will issue a declaration on December 1 at the COP28 climate meeting in Dubai that will call on the World Bank and “other international financial institutions to include nuclear energy in their lending policies France, Sweden, Finland, and South Korea, are also expected to join the pledge.
This is excellent news. So, too, was the recent statement by John Kerry, that “nuclear is 100% part of the solution.” The Biden administration’s climate envoy added that “it’s clean energy.”
While those developments are welcome, the nuclear sector still faces growing pains.
Proof of that came earlier this week when X-energy LLC, one of many companies hoping to commercialize small modular reactors, quietly laid off what was rumored to be about 100 employees.
The layoffs came just days after NuScale Power, another SMR company, terminated its contract to build a small modular reactor in Idaho with the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems.
The layoffs also came roughly two weeks after X-energy and Ares Acquisition Corp announced the termination of their proposed merger and initial public offering.
The announcement noted challenging market conditions and “peer-company trading performance” an apparent reference to the collapse of NuScale’s stock price, which is down by about 76% since January 1.
The release also noted a “balancing of benefits and drawbacks of becoming a publicly traded company under current circumstances.” …
Asked when X-energy will submit its design for approval to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, McEntyre said the company plans to do so “in the first quarter of next year.”
Top photo credit: Sheila Brummer, IPR
Read full post at SubStack
If the US government is serious about deploying nuclear power plants then they need to do something to speed up the permitting processes so that NuScale and others can actually build them quickly. Otherwise it is just more hot air coming from DC.
Do you still pay for electricity and gasoline?
Not us, eight years ago we invested in a solar system and electric car. It paid back in three years in gasoline savings alone.
Don’t forget to open your garage door before warming up your toxic polluter.
So where does your electricity come from at night? Or on stormy, rainy days? Don’t know where you live but if it’s in snow country where does your electricity come from when the panels are covered with snow?
As to toxic polluter, those solar panels and Lithium Ion batteries are filled with toxic metals and the mining and manufacturing of those items entail significant toxic pollution using lots of fossil fuels. Your mama raised a fool.