#HOME WIND TURBINE VS SOLAR HOW TO#

Other misleading ideas about renewable energy come from groups with ties to the fossil fuel industry, like the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Earlier this month, when asked about the unfolding Ukraine crisis on a podcast, Trump immediately responded by listing untrue ideas about wind energy. In recent years, some of the misinformation about renewable energy has come from former President Donald Trump, who frequently makes misleading and false anti-wind claims at his rallies and media appearances, including the untrue idea that wind turbine noise causes cancer. They're certainly making decisions based on what they're hearing.' Facebook groups spread misleading content 'And so when you have people coming and stating things as facts, especially if there's nobody fact-checking everything, right, it's difficult. 'These local officials are not necessarily experts in energy,' she says. In about half of states, regulations around how and whether to build rural utility-scale solar and wind are determined on the local level, Mills says. Hoen does say that studies in the Netherlands and United Kingdom have found some effects on property values, but they were far smaller than Kitson's reference to studies showing a 20%-40% depreciation. Wind turbines dot the countryside in Okarche, Okla., in 2021. Hoen says, 'We have not found evidence of property value impacts despite studying it over multiple periods of time.' He pointed to his group's analysis comparing the lower property values in the one local township that has wind turbines to the higher average property values in the greater county.īut Ben Hoen, a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says his more than 15 years of research has shown that wind turbines have little to no impact on nearby property values.

Kitson, the science teacher, testified in support of the zones, arguing that turbines negatively affect property values. But in October, a new law, SB 52, went into effect giving counties the ability to make exclusion zones with no utility-scale wind and solar projects. In Ohio, setbacks and other rules associated with renewable projects have historically been set at the state level. But she says misinformation can fuel setbacks that are more stringent than needed and sometimes act as outright bans on renewable energy. Setbacks limit how close wind projects can be to buildings, and Mills says they often make sense to reduce things such as noise and 'shadow flicker,' the moving shadows and strobing sunlight that turbines can cast onto buildings. Last year, a Department of Energy study found that setback regulations now represent the single-greatest barrier to securing locations for wind projects in the U.S. Misinformation gets mixed up in decisions over renewable projects 'At the end of the day, if local governments are not setting rules that allow for the infrastructure to be sited, those policies cannot be achieved,' Mills says. And she says it's in those often-fractious discussions about approval that misinformation is sometimes halting and stalling the installation of the renewables the climate needs. Yet every single rural utility-scale wind and solar project needs local or state approval to get built, says Sarah Mills, who researches rural renewable energy at the University of Michigan. electric utility companies at the White House in February 2022. President Biden takes notes during a meeting to discuss clean energy efforts with CEOs of U.S.

#HOME WIND TURBINE VS SOLAR HOW TO#

You got to figure out what they're going to say and figure out how to counter it.'

You got to figure out the economic arguments. 'I was just like, there's got to be a way to beat 'em,' he says of the developer, Apex Clean Energy. He and his neighbors went on the offensive. 'There were so many people saying that it's horrible, you do not want to live under these things,'' Kitson says.

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. The project would be about a mile from his home.įrom the beginning, Kitson - who teaches physics and chemistry at the local high school - knew he didn't want the turbines anywhere near him. 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 300-foot-tall turbine is among the 134 units that make up the Post Rock Wind Farm. A wind turbine is silhouetted against the sky at sunset near Ellsworth, Kansas.

Home wind turbine vs solar