Nearly every week, local communities are rejecting or restricting solar and wind projects. One of the latest rejections occurred in mid-September in Center, Nebraska, when the Knox County Board of Supervisors voted 6 to 1 to deny a conditional-use permit for a proposed solar project. According to an article by Mark Mahoney of the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan, the board’s decision “drew applause from most of a nearly full courtroom at the county courthouse.”
The denial marks the 58th rejection or restriction of solar energy in the U.S. this year. In addition, as can be seen in the Renewable Rejection Database that I created in 2015 and have been updating regularly, there have also been 35 rejections of wind energy applications. Over the past nine years, there have been at least 735 rejections or restrictions of wind and solar energy projects in the U.S.
Major media have not covered the longest-running legal battle over wind energy in American history: the Osage Nation’s 13-year legal fight with Enel. In December, a federal judge in Tulsa determined that the Italian company violated the tribe’s sovereignty when it built a 150-megawatt wind project in Osage County without getting permission to mine the tribe’s mineral estate. The judge also ruled that Enel must dismantle the project.
Although big media outlets seldom cover these conflicts, the facts—and the numbers—are undeniable. Rural landowners and homeowners from Maine to Hawaii are fighting to protect the integrity of their neighborhoods. They don’t want their landscapes and viewsheds destroyed by oceans of solar panels and forests of 600-foot-high wind turbines. They are also rightly concerned about the diminution of their property values and the noise pollution that comes with the projects.
The latest rejections provide only a partial snapshot of the resistance across rural America to alt-energy projects. I am being contacted almost weekly by people across the country who are fighting wind projects, solar projects, battery facilities, or high-voltage transmission lines. In Arkansas, residents are fighting the Nimbus Wind project. In Wisconsin, residents of Christiana township are fighting the Koshkonong Solar project. All along the Eastern Seaboard, fishermen, residents, and towns are fighting the encroachment of offshore wind projects.
How deep is the resistance to Big Wind? Entire states are now opposing wind projects. Last year, the Idaho House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution stating its opposition to the proposed Lava Ridge wind project. That 1,200-megawatt facility is proposed to be built near the southern Idaho town of Dietrich. Idaho residents are objecting because the project will infringe on the Minidoka National Historic Site, which commemorates the incarceration of thousands of Japanese American citizens during World War II.
Big banks, big businesses, big law firms, and big climate NGOs are trying to pave as much of rural America with solar panels and wind turbines as they can. Why? They are chasing the billions of dollars in subsidies allocated under the Inflation Reduction Act. But rural Americans are fighting the alt-energy blight, and they aren’t going to quit.
Robert Bryce is a reporter, author, and co-producer of “Juice: Power, Politics, & The Grid.”
