As Feds Cut Red Tape, More Local Governments Are Curbing Wind And Solar

"The number of counties with ordinances on wind turbines quadrupled from 2018 to 2022, a new federal study found."

"In Washington, D.C., federal lawmakers from both parties are debating ways to make it easier to build wind turbines, solar panels and transmission lines at a fast enough clip to meet growing demand, reverse the nationwide trend toward worse blackouts and offer a serious enough alternative to fossil fuels to bend the curve on planet-heating emissions.

Yet in town halls and county legislatures across the country, local governments have worked to counter those efforts, with rapidly multiplying zoning restrictions on wind and solar that threaten to shrink how much land is actually available for generating zero-carbon electricity.

In 2018, when researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory first surveyed nearly all the roughly 3,100 counties in the contiguous 48 states using search engines and legal databases, they identified 105 municipalities with siting ordinances on wind turbines. Because counties tended to have more than one ordinance on the books, the total number of regulations was 286, with as many as three separate regulations per jurisdiction."

Alexander C. Kaufman reports for HuffPost August 6, 2023.

Source: HuffPost, 08/09/2023