Misinformation Is Derailing Renewable Energy Projects Across The United States, NPR

[appalachiablue]

- NPR, March 28, 2022.

On a winter night in early 2016, Jeremy Kitson gathered in his buddy's large shed with some neighbors to plan their fight against a proposed wind farm in rural Van Wert County, Ohio. The project would be about a mile from his home. From the beginning, Kitson — who teaches physics and chemistry at the local high school — knew he didn't want the turbines anywhere near him. He had heard from folks who lived near another wind project about 10 miles away that the turbines were noisy and that they couldn't sleep.

"There were so many people saying that it's horrible, you do not want to live under these things,'" Kitson says.

He and his neighbors went on the offensive. "I was just like, there's got to be a way to beat 'em," he says of the developer, Apex Clean Energy. "You got to outsmart them. You got to figure out the science. You got to figure out the economic arguments. You got to figure out what they're going to say and figure out how to counter it."
At the shed, according to Kitson, they agreed that part of their outreach would involve posting information on a Facebook community page called "Citizens for Clear Skies," which ultimately grew to more than 770 followers.

In between posts selling anti-wind yard signs and posts about public meetings opposing local wind projects, there were posts that spread false, misleading and questionable information about wind energy. Links to stories about wind turbine noise causing birth defects in Portuguese horses. Posts about the health effects of low frequency infrasound, also called wind turbine syndrome. Posts about wind energy not actually reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Photos of wind turbines breaking, burning and falling — some in nearby counties and states, but some in Germany and New Zealand. According to 2014 data from the Department of Energy, the most recent available, out of the then-40,000 turbines in the U.S., there had been fewer than 40 incidents...

- More,
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1086790531/renewable-energy-projects-wind-energy-solar-energy-climate-change-misinformation

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. I live in northern New Mexico.

The first time my son came to visit me, a year or so after I moved here, so in 2010 or thereabouts, we were driving somewhere. And after a while he said, "Where are the solar panels?" Well, there were none, and he was right. In a place with amazing sunshine, every single roof should have had solar panels, but very few did.

Since then, I've gotten solar panels on my small house. I probably paid far more than I should have. My current electric bill is always $8.23 per month, down from about fifty dollars a month. I console myself that someday, when this place goes to be sold, whether I do it or my son and heir gets to do it, it will sell very quickly because of the solar panels and very low electric costs.