The vote wasn’t close. Last Saturday, residents of Lovell, Maine voted by a margin of 80% to 20% to reject a large solar project that was proposed to be built in their town. As reported by James Corrigan of WTMW-TV, “Lovell residents voted 202-30 to pass an ordinance killing a proposed 180-acre solar farm in a town meeting Saturday morning.”
Corrigan continued, “The farm, proposed by Walden Renewables, drew the ire of residents for its potential impact on the views of the surrounding mountains, as well as threatening the rural landscape of the town according to residents.”
The lopsided vote in Maine to reject Big Solar provides yet more evidence of the raging backlash in rural America against the encroachment of large-scale renewable energy projects. Of course, this backlash gets scant coverage in big media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, or National Public Radio. Nor does it square with the never-ending claims made by climate activists and academics from elite universities that solar and wind are supposedly cheaper than traditional forms of electricity production.
Those claims ignore the massive amounts of land that are required by wind and solar. But because reporters from big media outlets, and academics from elite schools seldom, if ever, visit rural America, or talk to people who live there, they tend to believe these conflicts simply don’t exist. Or if there are conflicts, they are happening because those rural bumpkins out there in flyover country simply don’t know what’s good for them (or the climate.)
Corrigan’s article also quoted Tom McLaughlin, a member of the Our Eden Association, a group created to fight the solar project. “I built here because of the beautiful mountain view,” he said. McLaughlin then made the obvious point that if the solar project was built it would “diminish the value of my property…I’m very gratified and proud of the people of Lovell who have turned out for this.”
According to the Our Eden Association’s website, the proposed solar project “would have cut over 10,000 mature trees and intruded on the Kezar Lake watershed, harming the town and the quality of life it affords all who live and visit here.”
The rejection of the project in Maine adds to the surging number of solar rejections that have occurred across the U.S. over the past few months. As I reported in these pages in January, at least 13 Big Solar projects were rejected in 2021. For more on those, see the Renewable Rejection Database (available on my website, Robertbryce.com). But that figure may be far too low. Indeed, I am being contacted all the time by individuals from across the country about fights their communities are waging against proposed solar projects. And due to other work commitments, I am woefully behind in updating the database. That said, there is mounting evidence that solar rejections are now exceeding the number of wind rejections.
According to a March 8 article published by NBC News, “57 cities, towns, and counties across the country…have proposed solar moratoriums since the start of 2021.” It added that at least 40 of those communities approved the measures and that “Local governments in states such as California, Indiana, Maine, New York, and Virginia have imposed moratoriums on large-scale solar farms. NBC News did not publish the list of communities that have rejected solar projects, and the author of the article, David Ingram, did not reply to three emails.
But the Lovell rejection of the solar project reminds me that when given the chance to express their views in an up-or-down referendum, New England residents have shown they don’t want big renewables. About six years ago, as I explained in a piece published in the Wall Street Journal, residents of Irasburg, Vermont “overwhelmingly voted down, 274-9, a proposed five-megawatt wind project near their town.” In the same article, I noted that residents of Swanton, Vermont had recently “met to consider a seven-turbine wind project proposed to be built atop nearby Rocky Ridge. The tally: 731 votes against, 160 in favor.”
Like Saturday’s vote in Lovell, those votes in Vermont did not garner much national media coverage. But the hard fact is that with each passing month, more rural communities across the country are saying no to big renewable projects and proving yet again, that land-use conflicts are limiting, and will continue to limit, the growth of wind and solar energy.
