Editor’s Note: The Socotra House Editorial Staff recently left the property, a slightly unusual occurrence in these challenging times in America. This was not exactly a “trip to town for a swim at the Powell Center.” Instead, it was a view of the United States of America, mostly conducted at Flight Level 360 on a generally east-north-east track from San Diego, California, and the marvelous blue of the Pacific Ocean to the efficient concrete of Dulles International Airport in the suburbs of Washington, DC. There is a lot of country out there, seen hurtling at hundreds of miles an hour from an impossible height, and having seen it east-to-west last week and west-to-east yesterday, it is an impressive display, subject to frequent interjections of memory.

We were one family subject to the proposed “Net Zero” imposition. If you live in a city or a suburb, the idea of someone dropping nearly two thousand acres of China-produced glassware on green fields just beyond the back property line may seem sort of intrusive. And it is intrusive, since this “renewable energy” project has an aspect of “renewable” signified by the requirement to “renew” hundreds and hundreds of acres of that glass, manufactured by coal-fired power and coated in industrial chemicals, every thirty years.

We would do this not to provide power to the people of Virginia’s Piedmont, but for the bustling bureaucrat boroughs of Fairfax County and the District to the northeast. From the jet yesterday, lowering our altitude on the approach to a safe landing, it is still a fairly significant distance of green. It will stay that way based on a recent decision by our County Planning Commission. But this is not over. Our Imperial City needs electrical power for a series of largely imaginary projects- intermittent power to charge a huge new system of electric vehicles, lighting for homes after the solar power source has disappeared over the horizon based on gigantic battery storage systems that do not exist. You know, things that make us feel better about our virtue. Or at least make those who choose to live in cities feel good at the expense of those who live in “green” places that are that way naturally. It is a refreshing change to see it all the way that it is.

This editorial sums up our feelings pretty nicely.

– Vic

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EDITORIAL: Some questions about renewable energy

· BY THE EDITORIAL PAGE STAFF OF THE FREE LANCE-STAR 10.24.2021

Proponents of replacing fossil fuels and nuclear energy with clean renewable energy are hitting some stiff headwinds, and it isn’t from the soon-to-be extinct coal companies, major utilities or Big Oil. As a recent article in Forbes points out, the stiffest opposition to installing wind turbines and industrial-size solar farms is coming from the people in rural areas who will have to live next to them.
Since 2015, “317 local communities or government entities from Maine to Hawaii … have rejected or restricted wind projects in the U.S.” That—and the “growing hostility” to Big Solar— “are proof that land-use conflicts are the binding constraint on the expansion of renewable energy development in the U.S,” writes Robert Bryce, author of “Not in Our Backyard.”

“Land use battles are occurring in states with some of America’s most ambitious renewable energy goals,” such as California, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont, Bryce points out.

The backlash is happening in Virginia as well. In May, Maroon Solar’s proposed 149-megawatt, $200 billion solar farm on agriculturally-zoned land in Culpeper County was rejected by both the county’s Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors due to intense citizen opposition led by Citizens for Responsible Solar. That same month, Fauquier County’s Board of Supervisors nixed a plan to build a five-megawatt solar farm on 40 acres along U.S. 17.

Local opposition is largely based on the fact that these large renewable energy projects cause noise, impact health, reduce property values, kill wildlife, and despoil rural viewsheds. But rural residents are also righty concerned about what will happen to used wind turbine blades and solar panels when their usefulness is over.

“According to our research, cumulative waste productions will rise far sooner and more sharply than most analysts project,” stated a recent article in the Harvard Business Review. “We see the volume of [solar] waste surpassing that of new installations by the year 2031. By 2035, discarded panels would outweigh new units sold by 2.56 times.” And most of the blades from decommissioned wind turbines are currently being sawed up and dumped in local landfills.

Rural communities are seeing thousands of acres of arable land being converted to energy production. An industrial-sized solar farm, which produces intermittent energy, requires 450 times more land than a nuclear plant, which runs 24/7. And wind turbines take up to 700 times more land than a natural gas well to produce the same amount of electricity. If more rural communities say no to these projects, will government authorities use their eminent domain power to seize their land?

People living in urban areas don’t have to worry that mountains of industrial waste from these facilities will just be abandoned in their communities. Rural residents do.

For example, in Spotsylvania County, sPower refused to post a cash bond or irrevocable letter of credit to protect county taxpayers from the cost of disposing of 1.8 million solar panels containing cadmium telluride and other toxic materials at the end of its solar farm’s useful life. Who’s going to pay for the clean-up if the LLC that built the solar facility is not around in 30 years?
That’s why proponents of renewable energy—which includes every member of the Virginia General Assembly who voted for a bill last year requiring Virginia utilities to transition to 100 percent renewables by 2050—should give voters some answers to these pressing questions.

Editorial Copyright 2021 Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star
Comments Copyright Vic Socotra