OPINION:
Environmentalists insist that they love the “little guys” — until they get in their way, ask inconvenient questions or try to block renewable energy projects intended to save the planet from “human-caused climate cataclysms.”
Then the little people learn the environmentalists are really working with wind and solar energy companies, public utilities, finance giants, politicians and bureaucrats — the climate-industrial complex. Stand in its way, and farmers, rural communities and American Indian groups can face protracted, expensive battles. But they often emerge victorious.
Energy analyst and journalist Robert Bryce reports that these little guys have rejected or restricted 735 U.S. wind and solar projects since 2015, including 58 solar and 35 wind proposals so far this year. Transmission lines, grid-scale batteries and other plans also face growing resistance.
Rural Americans don’t want these huge installations destroying their traditional way of life, hurting property values, raising electricity rates, wrecking vital croplands and habitats, ruining scenic vistas, killing birds, bats and other wildlife — and creating serious fire and toxic gas risks from lithium-ion electricity storage batteries.
They don’t want their countryside dotted with landfills piled high with billions of tons of broken and obsolete solar panels, wind turbine blades and other trash.
The proposed projects are daunting in their number and scale, and the dream of transitioning the United States from fossil fuels to an all-electric energy, transportation and industrial system would require vastly more.
Before being scaled back in a failed effort to reduce local and state opposition, the Lava Ridge Wind Project would have installed 400 huge turbines on some 200,000 acres of federal land in Idaho. That’s 310 square miles, over 4½ times the area of the District of Columbia. Most of its output would go to California, which already imports nearly one-third of its electricity.
The Koshkonong solar project near Christiana, Wisconsin, would cover 6,400 acres (10 square miles) and put a 667-megawatt-hour battery storage system near an elementary school.
The Biden-Harris administration’s plan for 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy translates into 2,500 12-megawatt turbines rising 850 feet above the waves. But all those turbines wouldn’t provide enough electricity (31,541 MW) to power New York state on a hot summer day if the wind blows.
The state’s plan is to spend $2 billion for 24,000 MWh of backup batteries for windless or sunless days, which would provide enough electricity to run the state for barely 45 minutes. Sufficient batteries would cost trillions.
Each offshore blade is 350 feet long and weighs 140,000 pounds; 2,5000 turbines would mean almost 500 miles of blades weighing more than 1 billion pounds. Imagine the cleanup and landfill costs after a major hurricane.
Yet a 2020 Princeton University report called for massively expanding U.S. wind and solar capacity to fight climate change and rebuild America.
As Mr. Bryce points out, however, those plans would require solar projects blanketing an area the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut combined — plus wind installations sprawling across lands equal to Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.
That’s without factoring in wind and solar power needed to charge grid-scale backup batteries to store enough electricity to power America for even a day or week of windless, sunless days.
Other projects are equally enormous, expensive and fanciful.
Summit Carbon Solutions wants to build a pipeline to carry carbon dioxide from 57 ethanol plants in five states — and inject the carbon dioxide into geologic formations beneath North Dakota. The company can provide no guarantees that the pressurized gas will stay in the ground and not erupt suddenly and violently, killing wildlife and people by rapidly replacing breathable air — as a natural carbon dioxide reservoir did at Cameroon’s Lake Nyos in 1986.
The cumulative impacts of these wind, solar, battery, transmission line and other projects would be incalculable — on land, wildlife, families, budgets and human health.
Adding to the cost, construction and raw material requirements, home, neighborhood and regional grids would have to be expanded and upgraded to handle the ballooning electricity demands and the surges and plummets associated with unpredictable, weather-dependent wind and solar power.
This is all irrelevant to those in the climate-industrial complex, who want to extol the “pivotal role” they are playing in driving America’s “renewable energy transformation,” meeting arbitrary greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and preventing “climate catastrophes.”
Property rights advocate Tom DeWeese says concerned citizens can fight back by asking tough questions about these policies and projects.
For example:
• What benefits has our community received from the solar and wind farms we already have, and from the taxpayer subsidies and increased rates we already have to pay?
• Why are you trying to end local land-use controls, take our property via eminent domain and destroy small local and minority businesses to build these enormous projects?
• How will ruining our wild and agricultural areas, killing wildlife and reducing our living standards do any good if China and India alone emit 38% of the world’s greenhouse gases (vs. 11% by the U.S.) and are building coal-fired generating plants every week?
Proud, principled resistance is essential if citizens are to defend their jobs, lands, living standards and freedoms.
• Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and an author of books and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.
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