"#Germany’s far-right #AfD party, hoping to clinch its first wins in two east German state elections on Sept. 1, is trying to pick up countryside votes by making opposition to #RenewableEnergy projects a centrepiece of its campaign."
It's the same playbook for far right parties everywhere: Stoke fear about immigrants, stomp on "woke", and work against clean energy.
The Secret Behind Germany’s Record Renewables Buildout
"#Germany tackled the industry’s toughest problem: slow permitting.
Some especially conducive moves include designating renewable energy projects as being in the national interest, sharing power-generation profits with locals who host solar panels or wind turbines, and providing long-term certainty to energy businesses that the government is serious about its climate goals."
A proposal for profit sharing with communities that host solar or wind farms is effective at reducing local resistance (this is how wind farms are everywhere in Denmark), with knock-on effects on building transmission corridors.
I mean oil and gas production gives royalties to the local communities, why should renewable energy production not do the same?
And it would be a good counterproposal to the far-right AfD strategy of riling people up against renewable energy.
“The vast tracts of land identified ...places enormous pressure on our rural counties, many of which rely on public lands for agriculture, grazing, mining, recreation, and community development.”
Personally, I think the mining and agriculture concerns are scant compared to the very real tax issue. We see transmission lines or renewables projects face scrutiny when the power itself doesn’t go to the people directly impacted. The same could be true here with taxes."
https://heatmap.news/plus/the-fight/spotlight/nevada-joe-lombardo-blm-solar
Nevada, ground zero for solar development in the American West, is now seeing a different kind of renewables revolution – against development. It might endanger the Biden administration’s crowning solar permitting achievement, and will mean developers in the Silver State will have to reckon with em...
Want to build out solar and wind on public lands? Give the public a stake.
"In Denmark, renewable wind power generates 54% of all electricity. The rapid expansion of wind power has been driven by policies that ensure citizens have a financial stake in its development. "
https://www.nordicpolicycentre.org.au/community_owned_wind_lessons_from_denmark
How to solve local opposition to green development
"Community benefits agreements allow developers to offer tangible economic benefits to local communities — including jobs, wages and funds for environmental protection — in exchange for hosting a project. They are not a new concept in energy development, but they are still relatively rare among clean energy projects, particularly in the Western United States."
https://www.hcn.org/articles/how-to-solve-local-opposition-to-green-development/
“But because we done this process, because we had informed the community, because we had a document as boring as that sounds, a document that listed all of the fears that our community had identified, the impacts that we wanted to address, the opportunities that we saw and how we wanted everyone to behave in this conversation, it meant the developers came in with a real understanding of our community. "
"Community ownership could cut planning times, by tapping deep local knowledge about areas that will be environmentally and culturally sensitive, and reducing the risk of organisational opposition. "
This report is only "landmark" in a culture that is corporate-dominated. But community involvement comes naturally in places where people are used to doing things cooperatively. See example of Denmark, in next post.
"In 2016, more than half of Denmark’s installed wind capacity was owned by citizens, rather than private companies.
This means that average citizens profit from, the transition to clean energy. This builds on a long tradition of energy co-operatives in Denmark.
One key policy is the 2008 Promotion of Renewable Energy Act, which created a rule that new renewable projects must offer at least 20% ownership of the overall venture to local residents."
https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/community-owned-wind-lessons-from-denmark/
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