Rejected solar and wind power projects are being tracked in a list kept by a Texan politics and energy author opposing the construction of renewable energy. The author laments the ‘enormous amount of money, lobbying, and legal firepower that is being deployed by Big Wind and Big Solar’.
The database of solar power rejections totals 21 individual line items. The list starts in 2017 with one rejected site. There were no projects in 2018, five in 2019, two in 2020, and thirteen in 2021. The list includes one project that was double counted, and three legislation references that don’t specify a particular project.
The majority of the rejections are town votes against changing zoning classifications to allow for the construction of a solar power facility on agricultural land.
The list’s author requests that his readers send him any additional rejections of facilities that he hasn’t yet discovered.
It is possible that a recent decrease in support for solar power is related to large scale development.
The pushback comes in multiple forms — though the language used in local town meetings tends to consistently reference bucolic views, rural character, and property values. Actual evidence of decreasing property value is inconclusive.
Recent research has found that solar power pushback begins to increase considerably as solar power facilities break 50 acres in size. pv magazine USA reported extensively on the Spotsylvania 500 MWac solar power facility, which went through a two-year battle of various approvals and rejections. A large section of that facility ultimately went online last summer.
The rejections do hurt the individual developers, land people, and the land owners of these projects. However, 17 rejections since the start of 2017 represent a very small fraction of the 2,681 utility scale facilities that actually were installed over that same time period, per the US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration 860-M report. These facilities totalled 35.1 GWac of generation capacity.
One example of a project that isn’t yet on the list occurred recently, in North Carolina. The landowner, Megan Taylor, said the offer by the solar company to lease her land for the next 35 years would “send my children to college and will allow me to secure our future.”
The town rejected her, and her family’s, secure future.
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No comments so far. Republicans in Ohio passed HB 6 in 2019. The FBI has filed charges against five Ohio Republicans, one of whom has committed suicide and the other four who are awaiting trial. The law is largely described as subsidizing two nuclear plants, two coal plants, and the hardest working reporters I have found acknowledge that six solar farms were also subsidized, although none of them have been on line yet, and therefore get no subsidy.
$900 million in annual savings were terminated by the Republican law, which killed Ohio’s efficiency programs. These programs cost about $180 million per year, saved $900 million and also eliminated the need for about $3.5 billion worth of new power plants, transmission and distribution equipment, and avoided $300 million per year worth of reserve margin.
The problem is not the Republicans. It is the fact that everyone else is acting like this is okay. It is not okay.
Nuclear power is insanely expensive. I mean that in simple words, pure and simple. The Vogtle plant, which is supposed to come on line after 17 years of construction is going to be the world’s most expensive nuclear power plant ever, and probably ever after. At $28 billion and rising, it will cripple the economy of central Georgia, and the Republican response is to delay the plant opening until after the Mid-terms. Whoop tee doop as we say in the old country.
New wind and solar from utility scale generation is a sixth to a tenth of the cost of the Vogtle nuclear power plant. The entire plant could be replaced with efficiency savings in less time than it presently is planned to open, if Georgia Republicans wanted to improve the economy of the state with utility efficiency programs and solar generation. They obviously don’t want to.
I wrote this today, on another comment page and I like it, so I’ll repeat it here. I’m not partisan. I’m dedicated to low cost clean energy. In that role I find it necessary to report partisan behavior as it affects clean energy. Republicans are corrupt and stupid and dangerous. That’s their choice, not mine.
Bus carrying 10.62 million people drives off a cliff:
Ned: “The problem is not the bus driver. The problem is that all the people on the bus are pretending like it’s not going over a cliff! I’m not partisan! Sure, the bus driver is corrupt and stupid and dangerous, but that’s like, you know, their prerogative.”
Sorry to tease, Ned! But to me it sounds like you are just about ready to pick a side. This IS a partisan issue and you clearly have opinions.