Counties are blocking wind and solar across the US — maps show energy capacity in your area
www.usatoday.com
Local governments across the U.S. are blocking new clean energy plants. See the best locations for wind and solar power, and where it's being stopped.

Counties are blocking wind and solar across the US::Local governments across the U.S. are blocking new clean energy plants. See the best locations for wind and solar power, and where it’s being stopped.

  • RememberTheApollo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    712·
    9 months ago

    I’ve lived in left leaning areas for decades. Solar is everywhere, from rooftops to open fields. We don’t have a ton of wind, but there’s a lot of offshore farms and quite a few in the hills. Nobody is “taking” land, it’s sold by the landowner.

    If right wing areas are blocking renewables it’s far more likely to be done so it props up the fossil fuel/power generation companies and has little or nothing to do with any actual drawbacks of renewables or their installation.

    • frostysauce@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      9 months ago

      Nobody is “taking” land, it’s sold by the landowner.

      If someone “owns” land that land was taken by somebody.

    • snooggums@midwest.socialEnglish
      927·
      9 months ago

      Rural folks don’t care about other people having rooftop solar panels. I am also not talking about offshore farms, which should be clear by my example about someone’s house being impacted.

      Large scale wind and solar do require some legal action in rural areas to make them feasible. The most common is needing to run the extremely large power lines across fields to the centralized distribution centers.

      It needs to be done, and people will be impacted, but they are still people and shouldn’t be ignored completely. In general, they should probably be conpensated more than they are for the inconvenience of having land forcibly purchased from them, or for the negative impacts on their area that are unavoidable for such large scale projects.