Correction: NIMBY-ism Killed Roughly Half of Proposed Clean Energy Projects
"Correction: NIMBY-ism Killed Roughly Half of Proposed Clean Energy Projects"
Share:
Almost half of clean energy projects proposed in recent years have been delayed or abandoned due to local opposition, according to a March report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That’s a lot of development potential denied.
[SL correction: I reported earlier that all the projects were clean energy. In fact, around 45% of the projects tracked were renewable energy, while the other projects included nuclear, natural gas and coal. I have changed the title of the post to reflect the changes, and changed the above paragraph.]
The causes of this opposition are diverse: Environmental concerns, worries about property values, suspicion of outside developers, and many more. Lots of these concerns are legitimate; many others come from a lack of understanding of the sector, poor communication by local officials and developers, or even from fake “astroturf” opposition funded by corporate special interests.
In my opinion, one of the biggest problems is that much of that economic potential is not going directly to citizens. If people don’t have a direct financial stake in a project, they’re more likely to oppose it. That’s why I’ve called for feed-in tariffs on the local and state level as a way to stimulate more community and individual engagement in the clean energy economy. It’s what drove community development in Germany, Denmark and other European countries — and it’s more important than ever in the U.S. given how much clean energy we need to deploy in people’s backyards if we’re going to truly address the climate crisis.
EnergyNOW had a piece worth watching on some of the barriers holding up clean energy projects in the U.S. It doesn’t touch upon how incentives like feed-in tariffs can influence public attitude, but it does look at some unique problems project developers and individuals face.
FRONT
This movie scene echoes Nimby in the U.K., starting at around 5 mins in..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFYyBU1BCC0
I’d like to get an intermediate lesson on feed-in tariffs (FIT) beyond the basics in wikipedia.
My utility (National Grid) has had a complex policy regarding purchase of surplus energy, which NG refers to as “parallel generation” in document ESB 756.
The most damaging delays were in the Mojave desert, where several big solar projects were poised to go forward until 2009-2010. Locals, apparently with oil money behind them, sued BLM for insufficient attention to ESA and due process. The land set aside for solar is mostly degraded or hardpan creosote habitat, with little biodiversity or plant biomass. Lawyers posing as heroic desert defenders usually had never been there.
This was huge. The capital markets spooked, two companies went down, and utility scale solar is only now recovering. 10% of the Mojave could power the entire country. Meanwhile, we’re OK with clearcutting 90% of Western conifer forests. The difference is money, of course- timber industry/NAHB in one case, gas and coal companies in the other.
We need to bail from this whole mansion/three car garage/big car scene. It’s murdering us.
Western Watersheds Alliance is not unwritten by fossil fuel interests. There’s is a very legitimate complaint that the same Old Energy interests have pressured the government to waive environmental protections that have been in place for half a century. Doesn’t that tell you something?
Stephen, it would be helpful to CP readers if you could provide a brief summary or definition of the “feed-in tariffs” that have facilitated energy projects in Germany. The Abstract of the 20-page paper you’ve linked under that subject does not mention them. Thank you.
Edith, you are exactly right. I’ve been writing about them for so long, I sometimes assume that people have heard of them. Very silly assumption, of course! I will be doing a major primer on the policy soon.
Aren’t regulations (whether directly from EPA or potentially interpreted by courts) which foster nimbyism mostly creations of the Democratic party?
On reviewing the study that you linked to, it included several coal, nuclear, gas and other projects in addition to renewables. Well organized community opposition can be extremely important in blocking the actions of the fossil-fuel industry and we should be careful not to end up supporting business-lobby arguments to weaken such efforts in the name of supporting increased deployment of renewables
Back when Obama cared, they tried to fast track land use approvals of solar in the Mojave. The reasoning was that there the land did not contain streams or significant wildlife values, which was generally true.
Opponents pounced on this process to cause delays longer than if the solar companies had just gone through normal procedures in the first place. Their motives are suspect, in my opinion.
Unfortunately you can’t just say ‘due process’ and protests/delay tactics are only valid when it comes to what I don’t like, and should be fast-tracked when I do like it. Courts will never permit that legislation to become law. As has been shown, there is always at least something wrong with any form of large-scale energy installation to someone. But, it’s going to take massive amounts of them in order to accomplish the real goal out there.
Recently there has been some movement in the regulation/siting process to attempt to combine all possible complaints/disagreements, and impact study requests into a single time-window, and then have another single time-window for appeals. This would eliminate the laddered litlgation process that has extended some permitting processes into the 8-10 year range. However, as you demonstrate, there’s a lot of folks out there that wish to see this fast-tracking come to fruition, but not when it comes to energy sources of which they disapprove.
NIMBY and wind: A relatively nearby wind farm project was going to be subject to a court action by an adjoining landowner (and resident there) over concerns about low frequency vibrations (subliminal noise). The wind farm devloper selttled out of court by paying Mr. Whitten enough that he agreed to move to a less windy location further north.
I suspect thre are actually other concerns about this project on private land having to do with raptors and other birds. The landowner leasing the site will find out the hard way whether this affects his wheat production; similarly for the other landowners downwind of the actual wind trubine sites.
For all those who would like more information on feed-in tariffs, now known as CLEAN Programs in the U.S., you’re welcome to visit http://www.clean-coalition.org and join our mailing list.
We work on enacting CLEAN Programs at the state and local level all across the U.S.
For a free how-to manual on CLEAN Programs for local communities, go to
http://www.clean-coalition.org/local-action
CLEAN is a little bit different in that it limits incentives to commercial scale projects. A good Feed-in tariff should apply to ALL interested RE investors, small or big. Millions of rooftops adds up fast and onsite solar PV is the best efficiency incentive one could ever design.
We should make every building incredibly energy efficient and we should be focusing on dispersed truly clean energy. Rooftop solar (and small wind). Industrial energy still deserves to go through a full environmental review. Siting is really important – new “clean” energy should be near existing powerlines, not fragment currently unfragmented habitat, not suck rivers dry, not destroy farmland. Sometimes what is seen as NIMBY just means the people who live there have a much better idea of why the project is bad or badly sited.
Sometimes, Jane, but typically not. You should see the places they stopped in the Mojave. There is hardly a bird or bunny for miles.
@hardly a bird or bunny.
Mr. Roddy, have you ever walked the Mojave? Climate hawks who advocate for the destruction of intact, ecologically valuable ecosystems are naive (save the planet?) hypocrites. The Mojave is one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in North America and a number of endangered species are directly threatened by sprawling, absurdly expensive and inefficient Big Solar boondoggles. Massive distributed generation in the VAST urban environment is much faster, more cost-effective and smarter than building outmoded central station water boilers hundreds of miles from where the energy is needed. The old energy model needs to die along with fossil fuels.
“Sometimes what is seen as NIMBY just means the people who live there have a much better idea of why the project is bad or badly sited.”
Typically… YES.
There is NO political future in trying to trade off ecological sensitivity against renewable energy.
In fact, scientifically speaking, both biodiversity and greenhouse gas pollution are at crisis levels – but biodiversity is judged to be farther gone than the atmosphere.
Please see the Nature special issue on Planetary Boundaries for a high level review and comparison (before retorting),
We need real win-win solutions, and solid systems thinking, not more point solutions that externalize huge costs.
There is a way to do renewable energy right and its not by building massive, remote central station solar and wind power plants. Solar and wind are everywhere, so lets put solar PV, microwind everywhere, starting in the VAST urban environment where the energy is needed, then go to the millions of acres of EPA identified lands that are already ruined by humans, then (if needed) go to the million mile ROW corridors, THEN (if STILL needed!) sacrifice ecologically valuable lands. Unlike the rest of the world, the US is doing it backwards as monopoly energy interests move to capture RE. The old energy model will have to die along with fossil fuels if we are serious about addressing climate change….
Very good point, local people are in a better position to assess the appropriateness of a given project and to understand the value of the unseen. Most animal life in the Mojave lives underground and comes out only at night – a fact unappreciated by many urban renewable energy advocates.
While there will always be Nimby-ism, when dealing with large scale projects, it is almost always the case that someone has an idea, does their homework, and then goes out to “sell” the public that this is good. This is bass ackwards. I have watched this process go on for years with water and the fate of the Sacrament – San Joaquin Delta in CA. There are just too many special interests with big money to spend to bother with a messy regional planning process.
This is completely the case with the large scale solar projects in CA. The projects were offered as a solution, but the public is not involved in deciding if that is the problem they want to solve. More public involvement in the early stages of planning is one way to vaccinate against Nimbyism.
If this Climate Progress trying to do the Onion… You need the make the joke more obvious.
Because that’s what it is to pipeline US Chamber PR into Think Progress.
A little more political sophistication, please! I don’t think we need to help the USCC with fragmenting our own movement.
The Chamber of Commerce represents Big Energy Monopoly interests. Of course they would want us to believe NIMBY’s are responsible for obstructing renewable energy. You sure fell into that trap.