Solar Rollout Resistance
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Solar rollout rouses resistance in Europe’s countryside / The Wall Street Journal
In parts of the European Union, plans to massively expand their clean energy production infrastructure are running into regulations meant to help protect local ecologies.
In one framing, this is an issue of positive aspirations running up against antique bureaucracy: we need more clean energy, and old laws are getting in the way of that.
In another framing, this is the age-old conflict between corporations that want to tear up the natural world to build things facing locals who don’t want their lakes and fields covered in industrial materials, their forests cut down to make way for power-generation infrastructure, and home owners who don’t want their views blocked by turbines.
This same conflict is playing out in somewhat different ways, with different, local players on each side, around the world right now.
And frankly there doesn’t seem to be a single, one-size-fits-all solution. Inevitably, trade-offs will have to be made, and in some cases the energy won’t be generated, in others local ecologies (which are valuable on many levels) will be harmed or threatened.
It’s not a pleasant dynamic, and could rewire politics and land-use policies in many of these areas.
Also: The rise of billion-dollar disasters
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