Category: Tech Media

by Kevin Killough   Local opposition has become a formidable force in resisting the growth of wind and solar power. Opponents have concerns including the impact on whales by offshore wind development, the gobbling up of limited agricultural land by solar companies, the degradation of grid reliability and the high costs of renewable energy. As the projects spread across rural America and along the nation’s coasts, residents of communities are forming grassroots opposition to the projects. In response to the growing opposition, some researchers and media outlets are engaged in a campaign to portray these grassroots efforts as being funded by oil companies who are trying to stop competition from other energy sources. Opponents of wind and solar projects say the effort is a smear campaign that is itself connected to the renewable energy industries. “What they do is they take the information we’re getting to people, and they spin it. And then they give their own little explanation, which is verbatim what the wind companies say,” Mandy Davis, president of the National Offshore-wind Opposition Alliance (NOOA), told Just the News. Hit pieces A study by Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law published in June concluded that local opposition is becoming the primary impediment to the…