Yes in my backyard: research rejects ‘NIMBY’ hypothesis for solar opposition

Most large-scale solar neighbors are supportive or neutral of additional projects in or near their communities, found research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of Michigan and Michigan State University.

Published in Frontiers in Sustainable Energy Policy, the paper, More power to them: U.S. large-scale solar neighbors’ support for additional solar, analyzes perspectives from residents living across the United States who live within three miles of a large-scale solar project. The researchers said they were unaware of past studies on neighbor’s perceptions of existing large-scale solar projects, as it has traditionally focused on people’s perceptions about proposed or hypothetical projects.

Across the 979 survey responses, which covered 379 solar projects that range from 1 MW to 328 MW in 39 states, 43% of the respondents said they felt positively about their local solar project, 42% were neutral and 15% felt negatively. What’s more, 43% of respondents said they would support new projects, 39% remained neutral and 18% said they would oppose additional solar projects.

Understanding local opposition is particularly important right now, the researchers noted, with analyst projections and transmission interconnection queues anticipating large-scale solar to rapidly deploy in the coming years to meet the growing electricity demand. But for this to happen, support will need to be sustained from communities and local governments.

(Read: Opposition stymies solar – sometimes)

However, with community opposition now a leading cause of large-scale solar project delays and cancellations, the researchers said this needed support cannot be assured.

While the project size, the resident’s education level and whether they have solar on their own home correlate with support, the researchers said subjective sentiments and the resident’s perceptions “are much more informative.” The most notable perceptions, according to the paper, were about how large-scale solar helps or hinders community quality of life, landscape aesthetics, residential property values, climate change, community interests and priorities. Additionally, the researchers found that seeing the project more frequently generally corresponded to lower support for additional large-scale solar projects.

“Just as has been documented for wind energy,” the researchers said, “we found that the NIMBY — not in my backyard — explanation for opposition to solar was overly simplistic and unhelpful in explaining neighbors’ sentiments.”

The residents surveyed lived within three miles of large-scale solar projects, but the researchers found that the impacts and concerns about regional large-scale solar projects extended across this distance. Importantly, they said, the resident’s distance from a large-scale solar project was not a reliable indicator of their familiarity, of their perceived impacts nor of their support for additional large-scale solar projects.

“Broadly, we find evidence to reject the NIMBY hypothesis, and, conversely, more evidence to support the relationship between large-scale solar support and community values, identity, sense of place, and protection of that place,” the researchers said.

The study noted the ongoing policy discussions around permitting reforms, which are designed to reduce timelines and streamline the permitting for clean energy projects. This has manifested in some states preempting local authority of siting and permitting of large renewable energy projects. As siting and permitting authority becomes “more centralized and top-down,” the researchers said, “understanding how to enhance meaningful community engagement, align with communities’ values, interests, and identities, minimize community conflict, incorporate community aesthetic feedback into project design, address property value concerns, and support community quality of life becomes all the more important.”

The respondents who sought more public involvement in a solar project’s planning process were generally less supportive of large-scale solar, the researchers found. This might suggest that offering residents more decision-making power could make them more likely to support additional projects, or the finding could be interpreted to suggest that people opposing additional large-scale solar projects seek more decision-making power so that they can reject proposed projects, the paper noted.

“Yet, surprisingly,” the researchers said, “we did not find planning process fairness perceptions to be significantly related to support for [large-scale solar].”

However, the researchers said more investigation should be done in this area as only a relatively small fraction of the respondents were unaware of the solar project prior to its construction, so the researchers said they lacked the power to analyze this rigorously.

The researchers also recommended for decision-makers to consider possible cumulative impacts with large-scale solar and other infrastructure development, as local residents expressed concerns about hosting more than their fair share of unwanted infrastructure.

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office.

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