(RightWing.org) – Citizens of the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) are beginning to realize that there are many hidden costs and complications in the move to change to “renewable energy” such as solar and wind on a massive scale. As voters go to the polls throughout the region, Leftist political parties like the Liberals and Greens are finding themselves losing seats in the various countries’ parliaments.
Across the Pond
In recent years, it has not been unusual to watch trends that begin to affect social policy follow the same path as the pilgrims did and make their way to the shores of America, usually they have a Liberal bent to them, but this one is, in part, a pushback against green agendas. While it’s never possible to point at one single issue that swings voters from one side of the political spectrum to the other, that is exactly what happened in the German states of Hesse and Bavaria. Conservative parties in both regions gained points while all three left-wing parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s national coalition lost points.
Here in the States
In the United States as one example, in Crawford County, Ohio — located roughly 65 miles southwest of Cleveland — commissioners voted 2-1 to institute a 10-year ban on wind energy projects, and when a referendum was placed on the ballot in 2022, 75% of the voters approved it. In 2021, Maine’s Democrat Governor Janet Mills signed into law a ban on offshore wind farms being built in state waters.
On a wider scale, the Wall Street Journal reports that communities are worried the rapidly expanding size of solar and wind farms will change where they live, and there are numbers that may lend credence to back up their concerns. In San Bernardino County, California, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System uses three arrays to capture sunlight, which covers slightly more than 3,200 acres of the Mojave Desert generating a combined 386 megawatts (MW) of power.
In the Nevada desert, one can find the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project where the collection field covers 1,606 acres for 110 MW of output. These, however, are built in the desert and when one considers that the average coal-powered plant is rated at 380 MW, it becomes easier to see why people who raise cattle or crops wouldn’t want to give up that much land.
The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law located at Columbia Law School updated its original report in March 2022 and says they found that “in nearly every state [except Mississippi], local governments have enacted policies to block or restrict renewable energy facilities.” This represents a 17.5% increase in delay/cancellation of projects from their September 2021 update and a 23.6% uptick in the number of projects being contested.
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