Increasingly, the Nimby (“not in my back yard”) sentiment that often drives homeowners to protest a planned landfill or wind commercial development near them is being directed at renewable energy projects.
(Bloomberg Businessweek)
Sweden—the country that brought the world 17-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg—is aiming to zero out greenhouse gases by 2045. To reach that goal, it’s ramping up wind energy. The country expects to install 1.8 gigawatts of capacity of wind power this year alone.
At Ripfjallet, in the forests near Malung in western Sweden, German wind developer WPD AG has plans to build as many as 30 wind turbines that would reach heights of up to 250 meters (820 feet)
The efforts of the group have led to a referendum that could decide the project’s fate, which local politicians will schedule by June 22.
“Wind power stirs up a lot of emotions, and the industry is used to both worry and criticism. Even if a lot of people are in favor of renewables and wind power, it’s different when it’s close by,”
Next door to Sweden, in Denmark, wind met 47% of the electricity demand last year, a larger share than in any other country. Two things break up the flat farmland of the Danish countryside: wind turbines and church steeples. Local dioceses of the Church of Denmark have traditionally had the right to object to changes that disturb the view to or from a church. This veto is increasingly being used t
Germany has 30,000 wind turbines, the most in the European Union. Bigger, more powerful ones are replacing old clunkers, and saturation is taking projects ever nearer to woodland. Fachagentur Wind, a government agency, ran a survey last year and found 325 lawsuits against wind projects, many brought on the grounds of protecting ecology and wildlife. (Wind turbines can kill birds and bats that coll.
The German Wind Energy Association, or BWE, fears that a net loss of turbines may be around the corner as the oldest subsidy contracts begin to expire.
“Murmurings of protests against wind farms here and there over the years have turned into a roar,” says Julia Zilles, a political analyst at the University of Goettingen. “Partly it’s a problem of provincial sensibilities vs. big-city politics: Locals feel that policymakers just don’t care what they think.”
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