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Renewable NIMBY

By October 13, 2009November 9th, 2021Energy Rant, Renewable Energy

“There should be a place for these — someplace that isn’t going to impact families quite so much.”  This was a quote regarding wind turbines from a woman in the Wall Street Journal article Renewable Energy, Meet the New Nimby. I laughed out loud for a while when I read this
California has a mandate for 33% renewable energy consumption by 2020.  New York: 25% by 2013.  Oregon: 25% by 2025.  These states and similar ones have meager interim targets and/or have meager portfolios today.  Some serious ramp up is required.

However, it seems people claim to want it but not bad enough to have to look at it.  They don’t want to look at transmission lines piping renewable energy in from Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, offshore, or from the other side of the mountains.  They certainly don’t want to pay for it.  Did I mention everyone in America also demands 100% reliable energy supplies and at a price that is almost negligible.  Something’s got to give.

Guess where the wind-energy potential is by far the greatest – right off coasts surrounding the country, overlooked by patio-decks of thousands of multi-
million dollar homes where 90% of the most vociferous loud mouths are carping that we must have more, if not all renewable energy.  But not in their vistas!  See NREL link below.

Certain celebrities fly about the country on their personal jets from one green junket to the next telling us trolls how we ought to live and what we ought to put up with, but not “me”.  I want to go sailing and not look at that hulking machinery messing the vista from my serene compound.

I grew up in the pink area of Southwest Minnesota and I can tell you that the wind always seems to be blasting there whenever I return for a visit.  When I was a kid, we had ground blizzards (no need for snow to fall from the sky – the powder keg is already laying about) in the winter and dust storms in the spring.  The western half of Iowa is packed with wind farms.  But yet, the potential for wind energy off much of the coastline is 50% greater, and steady.  And by the way, I’ve never heard anyone in the Midwest whine about the sight of hundreds of windmills and the supporting transmission lines.

I have an idea.  Let’s take everybody in flyover country and pack them into the Dakotas maybe using Kansas and the Texas panhandle for overflow.  They can all live under a sea of egg beaters.  “I’ll” just buy my own large photovoltaic system with battery storage, because I can.  It will look great on the roof of my 8,000 square foot home.  It will impress the friends even!

Jeff Ihnen

Author Jeff Ihnen

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