Locals Against Renewables
Locals Against Renewables
Chart(s) of the week
Reminder! I’m experimenting a bit with a new feature here at Steel For Fuel: Charts of the Week.
The research team at my firm, Energy Impact Partners, is constantly scanning the horizon for data to help us discern the trajectory of energy and climate technology. We see a lot of charts, and plan to share some of them here.
Here goes. This chart is from “Opposition to Renewable Energy Facilities in the United States: June 2024 Edition”:
Notes:
This is an often overlooked, but increasingly important factor underlying what I’ve previously called “The Adolescence of Renewables”.
Local ordinances are still not as problematic as macro variables like interest rates, profitability pressure, and transmission congestion. At this rate, however, the rise of these restrictions is absolutely a serious concern. Because of the way that permitting authority spans national, state, and local governments in the United States, this problem is an especially tricky one to address.
Offshore wind is sadly even more exposed to NIMBYs and BANANAs1 than onshore wind & solar. The recent blade failure at Vineyard Wind, the first large-scale offshore wind farm in the US, and subsequent closing of local beaches and marine operations, is not going to make this easier.
Permitting big renewable energy projects is inherently difficult, simply because they affect such wide swaths of land. I’m all for hacking away at regulations like NEPA which tend to add layers of bureaucratic burden without actually doing all that much to guard against environmental damage. But no matter what, planning big projects spanning thousands of acres is going to require pulling some permits. Hence, I really dig the idea of a software platform like Transect, which seems like it can make the process a lot easier.
The ADVANCE Act (Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy) is now law. How is this related? My sense is that increasingly undeniable constraints on the pace of renewables growth seem to be leading more people to the conclusion that we need to get moving on a nuclear renaissance. Thank goodness.
BANANAs = “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone”
This is fascinating, Andy. Do you have a sense of what the opposition is comprised of, or is there just a lot of variation behind the bars on the chart? For example, are these areas where community engagement would have helped, or is this opposition that's been long-codified into law?