Counties are blocking wind and solar across the US::Local governments across the U.S. are blocking new clean energy plants. See the best locations for wind and solar power, and where it’s being stopped.
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The inability to install solar panels on my home is enshrined in my HOA and is extremely unlikely to be overturned by our members. We should be passing laws making these types of restrictions illegal
There’s a story on Reddit about someone who snuck an extension cable onto the HOA president’s property and had it running something like an air conditioner full blast nonstop for months. They later said something to the effect of “oh yes, prices are going up but my friend who lives in the other city has solar and he’s fine”. This apparently convinced the person to change the bylaws.
Arson seems easier
And more fun.
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Wait… Aren’t you guys supposed to be the free-est nation on earth or something?
We’re a country founded by slave owners who wrote things like “all men are created equal”
*Some exclusions may apply
And they meant men too, not women.
But really they meant White Male Landowners with money.
HOAs were literally created to make sure that black people couldn’t buy homes. These covenants put legal blocks on the deed for eternity to keep it from happening. It didn’t take long for white people to buy a house and then turn around and sell it to a black family. The entire thing crashed. What we are left with are small Karens and Chads trying to control the people around them.
Minorities in general. Some of the first HOAs excluded Blacks, Jews, Asians, etc in literal writing. It took a SCOTUS case to overturn.
They also exist to make building a subdivision easier which is there primary purpose today.
You mistyped “allow municipalities to avoid their responsibilities and grant power to private shadow governments with storied histories of abuse and none of the hypothetical accountability that is guaranteed by the US Constitution”.
They are free to die without healthcare
It was an Irishman that wrote “free to screw you before you screw me”.
Colorado House Bill 21-1229 is law here now, maybe your state can pass a bill like it too?
what- the HOA folks are worried they’d see your PV panels instead of a shingled roof for the .4 seconds they see it at all while they’re parking in thier driveways?
HOA should be requiring solar instead of banning it.
I disagree. That’s a huge cost to force on people.
I don’t live in an HOA but my home’s value went up $150k over the last couple years for absolutely nothing. It would be cool if a tiny portion of that increase was at least due to something like solar panels being installed.
No one is forcing you to buy a home in an HOA that requires solar.
Could easily be in an HOA that adds the requirement though.
I do have sympathy for people that vote NO on large capital expense assessments because its expensive for them and then have to come up with the money anyways.
I love how you used the entire argument against HOAs to argue against HOAs, yet still got downvoted.
I appreciated the irony.
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Parking in the driveway is also banned in many HOAs.
tell me you’re exaggerating? sounds like fucking hell on earth to me.
Where I’m from, laws were changed so communities like this can’t block lot modifications that improve a lot’s sustainability performance (e.g. rooftop solar, rainwater harvesting, etc.). Not that anyone here would block rooftop solar, it’s wildly popular.
We should be passing laws making
these types of restrictionsHOAs illegalFTFY
America, home of the not free to do what you like with your own house.
Yes. And some states (e.g. Washington) already have.
The governing documents may not prohibit the installation of a solar energy panel by an owner or resident on the owner’s or resident’s property […]
I suspect that more states will follow WA and CA and start saying that counties and cities no longer can block things like denser housing, extra units on a lot, or solar.
Find an HOA with conservative leadership and you’ll find all sorts of bs. Worse when they weren’t like that when you bought, but have turned into a MAGA idiot and reject anything green on principle.
Some states do have those laws already
Would that be Republican controlled counties?
With VT and CT on the list, it seems like a NIMBY issue.
I live in uber-blue NW Oregon and even my county banned solar farms because they claim it’s wasting our fertile soil that can be used for factory farming instead. The county is controlled by douchy Republicans though
Democrats are better
Odds are that they are Republican counties because wind and solar tend to be built in rural areas and rural areas tend to be Republican. I would actually expect Democrat held areas to also oppose them because people in general are NIMBY.
That said, there are a bunch of valid reasons to oppose large scale projects that can be addressed. A primary problem is the disruption to the local area, either by destroying roads not designed for the heavy machinery or the government taking land from locals that is necessary to implement the project. Both could be handled differently than they tend to be as the large companies that implement these projects tend to not care about locals already living in the area. Some ways they could improve the process would be to improve the roads and offer better compensation for affected locals, but there are valid reasons that some retired person who lives in the home they grew up in to oppose a power plant even if it would be a net benefit to society.
That is to say it is complicated and the best that can be done is better treatment of the people that are impacted by these projects while understanding that some are just complaining to complain and some really do have valid complaints that need to be better addressed so progress can be made.
I’ve lived in left leaning areas for decades. Solar is everywhere, from rooftops to open fields. We don’t have a ton of wind, but there’s a lot of offshore farms and quite a few in the hills. Nobody is “taking” land, it’s sold by the landowner.
If right wing areas are blocking renewables it’s far more likely to be done so it props up the fossil fuel/power generation companies and has little or nothing to do with any actual drawbacks of renewables or their installation.
Nobody is “taking” land, it’s sold by the landowner.
If someone “owns” land that land was taken by somebody.
Rural folks don’t care about other people having rooftop solar panels. I am also not talking about offshore farms, which should be clear by my example about someone’s house being impacted.
Large scale wind and solar do require some legal action in rural areas to make them feasible. The most common is needing to run the extremely large power lines across fields to the centralized distribution centers.
It needs to be done, and people will be impacted, but they are still people and shouldn’t be ignored completely. In general, they should probably be conpensated more than they are for the inconvenience of having land forcibly purchased from them, or for the negative impacts on their area that are unavoidable for such large scale projects.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, I’m pretty sure you’re correct.
From reading more about the blocked installs here, most of them have to do with the distance between wind turbines and nearby property lines. Many states are passing laws that the turbine has to be far enough away from property lines that it can’t fall onto someone else’s property, which seems reasonable. However these restrictions make building turbines difficult and limits what land is viable. Many counties require 1.1x to 1.5x the height of the turbine as a safety distance, which with the typical turbine height of 600’ means 660-900 ft radius around the tower that doesn’t overlap someone else’s property. Some counties have really high distance requirements, that go up to 1320’ (a quarter mile) or farther.
The other concern is sound levels, with some counties limiting how loud the turbines can be to nearby properties.
Solar has less restrictions than wind, places with restrictions on it seem to just be limiting the max solar farm size. I’m not sure what the purpose behind that limitation is.
Your link clearly explains how counties are setting excessive limits to effectively ban wind farms, like having a 1 mile radius near any property when only 1000 feet is required or demanding it makes less noise than a dishwasher.
The reasons for these limitations are to keep us dependent on gas and coal for as long as possible. This is outright corruption, shame on the ones defending it.
You try sleeping with a dishwasher in your bedroom…
Do you plan to sleep on a wind turbine?
If I put a dishwasher 100ft away, can you still hear it? What about 100ft and an insulated wall?
Many states are passing laws that the turbine has to be far enough away from property lines that it can’t fall onto someone else’s property, which seems reasonable. However these restrictions make building turbines difficult and limits what land is viable. Many counties require 1.1x to 1.5x the height of the turbine as a safety distance, which with the typical turbine height of 600’ means 660-900 ft radius around the tower that doesn’t overlap someone else’s property.
They could just build shorter turbines, but the big energy companies will whine it doesn’t make them enough money.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted
Based on replies I don’t think people read the whole post or just don’t understand nuance.
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I’ll take imperfect up/down vote usage that helps filter out the worst takes the majority of the time over letting horrible people appear to be on the same level as a reasonable take.
In general I try to go back on downvoted posts to see if I was unclear to improve it for next time. But I am guilty of relying on prior voters knowing about context and end up using group concensus to vote posts up or down when they are a bit unclear on intent, so can’t really blame others that donthe same.
I try and not assume the worst in people, but over time it is getting really hard not to knowing how common it is for malicious actors to use subtle hints to sway opinion.
In general I try to go back on downvoted posts to see if I was unclear to improve it for next time. But I am guilty of relying on prior voters knowing about context and end up using group concensus to vote posts up or down when they are a bit unclear on intent, so can’t really blame others that donthe same.
I’m not sure why, but it was the beginning of your second paragraph where my urge to reflexively downvote you (after having been primed by seeing the existing score) was strongest. It might be because I skimmed over the “that can be addressed” part, or just that “disruption to the local area” is a relatively weak criticism and citing it as your primary example set off my reactionary spidey-sense a little.
Frankly, I’m not sure what you could’ve done differently. Maybe change that first sentence to something like “That said, the reasons locals oppose large scale projects aren’t always entirely invalid?”
This is great feedback!
I feel like trying to start positive feels like saying “I agree with everything, BUT…” so I tend to reinforce at the end to reinforce my overall point with context. Maybe that is just me and how many times I see people say they agree and then completely disagree for the rest of the post.
Thank you for taking the time!
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What a giant load of conspiracy nonsense
I really wish we could get away from the up/down votes. Despite knowing better and honestly not giving a flying fuck, I find myself obsessed with it at times and it’s not healthy. As much as I dislike the emoticons that have taken over, I’d almost prefer that. Use hearts or smiley faces or something and show the actual ratio of up/down, ie 5 hearts and 5 frowny face or whatever.
As I lamented a few days ago, I still miss Slashdot’s moderation system.
I feel like we always do things exactly the opposite of whatever rational would be.
“These people aren’t using the land to it’s full potential so we’re justified in murdering them and taking the land.” - About the people living half naked off the land.
“You can’t just make people move, even if you compensate them and are doing it for the greater good.” - About the people who drive a pickup truck to Walmart.
I know there’s more nuance, it’s just funny to me.
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Not OP but the thing about locals is serious, in Brazil I know about some wind farms that had disrupted the life of locals because was made too close of their houses, and these windmills are very loud. Now ppl can’t live a decent life there and energy companies gave compensation to them.
We need more coal mines the children yearn for the mines
builds character!
Yo dawg. I heard you like your miners to be minors…
The mines have cute little canaries in them so they’ll get to play with little pets
I’m not sure if it wasn’t clear, but THE PLANET IS DYING.
The planet itself will survive this easily, the inhabitants on the other hand…
Yep, this is what I tell people…the planet will recover just fine…but just after it’s killed pretty much everything off and started over.
Nah the planet will be just fine. Humans (and other living things) though will truly be fucked.
Some living things will make it through the extinction event and the next sentient species will fuck it all up again in a billion years or so.
Assuming they can even get to our level, we already extracted the easily reachable fossil fuels and the circumstances that originally created them (lots of trees dying and not being broken down by fungi) probably won’t ever reoccur.
Maybe something will turn all the plastic we’re making into a new fossil fuel, but more likely any civilization that comes after us will be stuck in the bronze/iron age.
As it was foretold
This has all happened before and it will all happen again.
So Say We All
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Can’t the boomers are still around and they still remember when Jane Fonda was easy on the eyes. Plus you know you got the granola gluten free spiritual not religious types now who are convinced they can generate electricity from unicorn farts.
All the money from her exercise videos went to left wing activism, fun fact for the day
Don’t believe it. Also was that before or after she shot at US soldiers?
I don’t think she shot at anyone, she was photographed sitting on an air defense gun in North Vietnam if that’s what you mean.
And it’s true about the video profits, it’s all a matter of public record you can look it up if you’re so inclined.
Doubt
Read up on the Campaign for Economic Democracy it’s a really interesting bit of history. She’s been involved in activism her whole life - anti war, feminism, climate protection and economic justice causes, actually a really cool person (if you like left wing causes)
This right here is where I stopped carrying what you have to say.
Maybe some of these things (at least rooftop solar, but maybe not wind turbines) ought to be guaranteed by right on a Federal basis, kind of like how the FTC prevents local governments from stopping people from putting up antennas.
The biggest barrier to consumer renewable energy is price (and it has gone down considerably already.) Big projects ensures more development, which can lead to even lower prices.
With the state of the US power grid, we need more big renewable projects everywhere. Better subsidies on home renewables to take stress off the grid. The sooner the better !
From the article it looks to be only “utility-scale” projects that are blocked, I assume that doesn’t include roof solar.
I haven’t heard of local ordinances myself, but I have heard of HOAs fighting them.
Is there anything a HOA won’t fight?
We are really fucking bad at this
I know what they mean, but the headline makes it sound like they’re building a big-ass dome across the US, to block out the sun and wind entirely.
Some of these guys believe the earth is literally under a dome already. They also seem to think that wind farms are a global conspiracy to turn them gay or something.
Blacken the sky!
Can we do that over the parts of the country still using coal?
Their interactive map says mostly the Midwest.
The Simpsons already did this bit.
I live in SE NC. Duke energy has incentives for solar and they are about to pay for the installation of my Tesla charger in my garage… It’s not all bad I guess…
