It is not unreasonable to ask how the alternatives movement, led by solar and wind, went from being the darling of the nation, the face of our energy future and something deemed worthy of billions of tax dollars in subsidies, to, within just a few years, being significantly impeded or outright banned by local governments in about a quarter of the country.
Rural communities were most impacted by the projects. Some farmers were upset that their neighbors were selling or leasing their land to solar companies. They didn’t want to walk out their door and see hundreds of acres of neighboring land filled with shiny solar panels instead of corn, soybeans and wheat.
Many states, including my home state of Ohio, passed solar-related laws that provided no avenue for local government to stop or even review the projects. Even if such authority existed, it was easy to empathize with farmers who were selling to solar entities. For many farmers, the solar deals were a way to get out of debt and start anew.
As I wrote in a Washington Post article in 2019, “At recent public hearings I attended, some among the roughly 30 landowners who are selling or leasing their land for the projects extolled the benefits of solar, but most offered the frank explanation that the deals they were offered were a financial lifeline not only for them, but for their children and grandchildren.”
But just two years later, I noted in a follow-up Post article that, locally and across much of Ohio, the tide had turned strongly against the growth of solar. “Questions are growing about neighboring property values and environmental issues,” I wrote. “What about responsible land practices such as plant maintenance, erosion protection and water runoff? When the solar fields are dismantled someday, will the soil be safe for reuse? Solar companies are providing answers, but trust is not always evident.”
In addition to those concerns, it became clear that the solar (and to a lesser extent, wind) projects were tearing communities apart. Plus, suspicions grew even more when developers who built the projects sometimes sold them to someone else – raising questions of responsibility and accountability. Who was profiting from all the tax subsidies?
In response to the growing antipathy toward solar, the Ohio legislature passed a bill giving local officials more power to reject, restrict or ban solar and wind projects. Similar authority exists in other states, and across the nation local governments are stopping, or at least pausing, the expansion of solar and/or wind.
In February, a USA Today analysis “found by the end of 2025, 24% of counties nationwide had some impediment to new utility-scale wind and solar energy ‒ up from as few as 15% two years earlier. That calculation of local rules included outright bans, zoning restrictions, land-use rules or political stonewalls.”
Similar actions have continued into 2026. Just a few days ago in Minnesota, the Morrison County Planning Commission “voted to move forward with the revised language to impose a temporary one-year moratorium on community solar energy, solar farms and wind energy conversion systems,” the Morrison County Recordreported. “If enacted, the Morrison County Board of Commissioners will appoint a working group to study and evaluate the county’s existing policies and regulars regarding community solar energy, solar farms and wind energy conversion systems.
Back in Ohio, at least 27 (out of 88) counties have banned utility-scale solar and/or wind projects in at least parts of their counties. (In Richland County, Ohio, residents were voting Tuesday on whether to reverse a ban on large-scale wind and solar enacted by commissioners, with tens of thousands of dollars coming from out-of-state interests seeking to reverse the ban.)
The fierce backlash in many parts of the country against solar and wind farms has been an example of the idea of something seeming less alarming than the actualization of it. In other words, it’s one thing to talk about solar fields that will someday spring up. It’s another thing to witness it happening, to drive past what was once field after field of crops and suddenly see those same hundreds of acres covered by row after row of metal and glass solar panels. It can leave a sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach, especially for rural residents who for generations have loved and cherished their farmland.
The rapid expansion of “alternatives” has happened at warp speed, long before many members of the public and their local governments were properly informed or prepared. Now, private citizens and public officials are pumping the brakes, trying to slow a movement in which momentum exceeded readiness, politics outweighed planning, and taxpayers were left holding the bag yet again.
Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing opinion columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Solar is probably easier to dismantle than the wind mills. Short search says,”2,500 tons of concrete poured directly into the ground to anchor a single tower“
That’s staying there forever.
Like the pyramids, just not as pretty or evocative. That’s truly an ugly tought, Mr., but unfortunately accurate.
Here is a “promotional” video for wind turbines. It also lists the material required just for this phase. Other phases include mining, processing, transport, manufacture, life cycle maintenance, ultimate decommissioning and disposal. When you consider the full short life cycle of these monstrosities, it becomes evident that they are far more environmentally destructive than using fossil fuels to begin with.
https://blog.enerpac.com/wind-turbine-construction-time-lapse-video/
“ it becomes evident that they are far more environmentally destructive than using fossil fuels to begin with.”
A point I have made quite a few times. !!
The millions of bats and birds being slaughtered alone makes them an environmental disaster in addition to being a hideous blight on the natural landscape.
Not to mention all the toxic chemicals needed to extract neodymium for the magnet, creating huge sludge lakes in China, and the plastics and resins that are needed to make the blade, who’s frames are often made from plundered balsa.
On top of that , the towers and blades are either left to rot and decay as an environmental destructive eyesore , or end up using huge areas of landfill which again destroy the environment.
It is one extremely TOXIC industry from start to finish.
Nowhere near as bad as the solar industry though.
Not sure about that when you consider the foot print required for solar. While wind requires a similar foot print, solar literally blankets that land with panels – in many cases, literally thousands of acres.
The footings needed to support solar are small and easily removed. The ones needed for each tower are more or less permanent.
Note the key word in the post you are responding to, “dismantle”.
Another issue is that they great big blobs of concrete disrupt the water table .. for ever, as well as changing soil chemistry over time.
Not to mention the damage done to soils as the vibration of turbines drives normal soil life away, removing natural nutrients and aeration from the soil.
I seriously doubt that solar array frame footing bases are “small and easily removed”.
The actual downward load from the mass of the construction is bugger all. The footings will be required to anchor the panel frames to the ground to withstand serious wind loading. The only way to achieve that economically is a mini-bored pier to create sufficient sidewall friction to hold the frame down. Depending on ground conditions, that could be up to 2m deep and likely a diameter of around 450mm … base plate needs to be fixed to something unless it is cast insitu.
Try extracting thousands of 2m x 450mm dia. bored piers.
Each set of panels needs to have concrete supports. That is a significant quantity of concrete per acre of PV solar. Other solar systems like Ivanpah (failed) require much more concrete per ground space.
Winds footprint isn’t smaller, each turbine requires the surrounding pad area (10-40 acres) to be cleared of potential obstructions (trees) so the harvestable wind energy isn’t restricted in any way.
For example 2,200MW (2.2 GW) of capacity
Wind would require Between 66,000 and 132,000 clear acres of land for 2.2GW capacity. However, wind has a 40% capacity factor so you would need 150% more turbines on 320,000 acres.
Solar would require (per Google AI) 15,400 acres for 2.2GW … But solar has a dismal 25% capacity factor in prime weather/latitudes but less than 10% in winter and latitudes above 50°N/S. Accounting for capacity factor you would need 4 times that to have anywhere near 2.2GW actual generation. Furthermore you would need as much as10 times as much in winter. So worst case to get 2.2 GW in winter you’d need 22GW installed capacity on 154,000 acres but, being Solar, you would still only get the generation from 10 am until 2 pm on prime solar days and zero during peak demand.
Nuclear gives you the same power at 98% Capacity factor 24/7/365 on just 12 acres regardless of day or night or if the wind is blowing or not.
If you have not already seen it, Energy Bad Boys have a post about this issue as well. The overbuild necessary for wind and solar to provide the energy needed to power everything during the day while also charging the batteries needed to keep things running once the sun sets and the winds calm is almost beyond comprehension. While this analysis is for solar, I doubt it would be much different for wind, or combined wind and solar. https://energybadboys.substack.com/p/solars-land-use-problem-is-much-worse
One practice — read this many years ago — could be to remove the top 3 or 4 feet of the base and seperate the steel from the concrete — all to be reused. The hole would be filled, the surface recountoured, and re-vegetated. Coal-cuts in Pennsylvania and West Virginia have been reclaimed, often at great expense to state budgets.
How the wind and solar contracts have been written is something I have no information about.
Whose laywers were smarter?
That can work if you are replanting with grasses and smaller bushes. If you hope to regrow trees, you will need to remove much more of the concrete.
But they don’t. In face if a turbine mast is damaged and they need to replace everything they dismantle down to the footing, grind down the mast connecting bolts, cover the remainder with soil and place a new footing elsewhere on the existing pad area. They don’t reuse footings.
Question: The soil removed upon construction – what happened to that?
Most of it goes to “Backfill” the footing. The remainder is leveled over the surface, used as Road Base for access roads or burns for water control.
berms. for water control
If you build it well…
.. you end up with a very nice berm 😉
Dang Fat fingers!
You’re assuming that the excavated material is suitable for roadbase or anything else other than organic fill … mostly it is not useable. I’d imagine that the vast majority of the excavated material is backfilled, spread and levelled around the site.
30m dia. x 5m deep concrete and the conical top probably springing 1.5m to the surface is a lot of concrete, ~3,900m3.
Kind of like disagreeing which over which seat in the orchestra want to be occupying as the Titanic slips under the waves to be honest.
Removing the top 3 or 4 feet of high strength reinforced concrete is easier said than done. Demolition of a thick ground slab or suspended slab is easier because there is no lateral resistence below so the energy of the 40T demolition hammer isn’t absorbed by any underlying concrete structure, only compressible earth. or nothing at all.
And they don’t remove the concrete at End of Life. They simply remove the mast, grind down the large steel bolts that held it in place and cover the remainder in fresh ground. MW per MW more concrete is used for Wind Turbine foundations than for an equivalent total MW of Nuclear when lifecycle is brought into play. Wind will be installed then replaced 3 additional times over the lifespan of Nuclear.
I doubt that new instalations today will be replaced after one life cycle and wind will be mostly obsolete
A good point.
For perspective, a concrete cube 30 ft on the side.
What is the carbon foot print for 2,500 tons of concrete?
Firstly, all minerals for the concrete have to be mined using heavy machinery with big diesel engines. The minerals are hauled from the quarries by trucks with big diesel engines. Portland cement is by calcining shale and limestone in rotary kilns at 2700° F. Heavy machinery is used to dig the pit for concrete base pad. Lots of CO2 released in the manufacture of the steel re-rod for the concrete. The concrete and re-rod are hauled to the site by trucks with diesel engines.
How much CO2 is released in the manufacture of the steel for the pylon and the nacelle? How much CO2 is released for the manufacture of the electricity generating equipment? There is ca. a ton or more of copper in generator system. How much CO2 is released constructing infrastructure for electrical system to connect electricity from wind turbine to the grid? How much CO2 is released in the manufacture of blades and transport of these to the site? How much CO2 is released from the backup generators when there is no wind?
Biden subsidies for wind and solar farms expire at the end of 2026. This is why there is rush to build the farms. After 2026 no more of these will be built.
Lots of CO2 released in the refinement of steel from Iron Oxide to make Wind Turbine Masts and Solar Panel supports too.
Lots more CO2 released refining Silica into Silicon to make Solar PV Cells.
Both reductions require Coal mining and transport.
“Portland cement is by calcining shale and limestone in rotary kilns at 2700° F. ”
____________________________________________________________________________________
Short search says: Calcination A chemical process where limestone (calcium carbonate) is superheated, breaking it down into calcium oxide and releasing CO2.
Did I miss that somewhere in your response?
I’ve posted this before. The Office of Renewable Energy Siting and Electric Transmission (ORES) in New York has full authority to issue permits for solar and wind regardless of any local opposition. There is a young lady who has formed a non-profit to fight against ORES and Hochul – in other words, she is actually doing something instead of just talking about it. Her non-profit is https://www.americanlandrescuefund.com/ and you can get an idea re: her depth by going to her Facebook page – yeah, I know, Facebook, but check it out before simply dismissing it. She is taking real action and exposing just how corrupt the entire operation is in NY. This is the kind of activism that needs to spread across the country and I hope others follow her example. https://www.facebook.com/alexandra.fasulo Please consider making a donation to support her work.
Also, for those who may not know, Robert Bryce has compiled a rejection data base here – https://www.robertbryce.com/rrdb
And lastly, a video created by Robert Bryce to me provides a real life clear illustration of the total insanity of solar industrial complexes (we need to stop calling them “farms”). Thanks to Ron Stein for helping sharpen my message here.
The linked video, https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/sunblock-the-global-fight-to-save shows, among other things, a comparison between a 270 MW (nameplate) solar complex covering 2300 acres or 3.5 square miles to a 1200 MW gas plant covering 26 acres or 88 times smaller. So the gas plant produces over 4 times as much electricity 24x7x365 while the solar complex produces electricity maybe 20% of the time and never after dusk or before dawn. Also, that solar farm may last 15-20 years at best whereas the gas plant will last 50 years or longer. And, those solar panels can’t be produced without burning a lot of fossil fuels to power the machinery needed to mine/process/transport minerals, manufacture, site prep, lifecycle maintenance and ultimate decommissioning – and what are we going to do with all those end of life solar panels?
And of course, both wind and solar need a backup system for the times the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine adding to overall system cost. And who benefits most from all this? China! The net is, wind and solar are far more environmentally destructive than hydrocarbons, including coal, and if anything increase the need for them.
In my mind, this is a red alert all hands on deck national security issue. As Ed Hoskins notes in his articles:
Never forget:
Sun Tsu’s first art of war:
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” That is exactly what is happening as Western governments pursue self-harming Green Energy policies.
There is no better way to damage Western societies than by rendering their power supplies unreliable and expensive. Who Benefits ?
and
The late Professor Sir David MacKay:
“The dependence on Weather-Dependent “Renewable Energy” to power a developed economy is an Appalling Delusion”.
There’s so much delusion and I think it’s so dangerous for humanity that people allow themselves to have these delusions that they’re willing to not think carefully about the numbers and the realities, and the laws of physics and the realities of engineering… humanity really does need to pay attention to arithmetic, and the laws of physics.”
Arithmetic? Laws of physics? Engineering? These are all lost on politicians, to our incalculable cost.
Remember, we are fighting against the kind of ignorance on display here:
https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2048876810692096279
Solar and Wind farms don’t suddenly spring up.
Correct. Here is my schpeel, sharpened again with the help of Mr. Stein.
Solar panels and wind turbines do not magically appear out of thin air and are 100% dependent on fossil fuels from cradle to grave.
· Both wind turbines and solar panels require massive amounts of minerals extracted from the earth in countries around the world with many countries having little to no labor laws and no environmental controls – they don’t care if rivers, land and ground water get polluted. The Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations” describes the humanity atrocities among folks with yellow, brown, and black skin, and the environmental degradation occurring in developing countries so that the wealthy countries can go green.
· Mining uses a lot of very heavy fossil fuel powered equipment, except the Congo where manual labor including children is used.
· Then the minerals need to be processed to separate the ore from the overburden – again using fossil fuel powered machinery.
· Then the minerals need to be transported to wherever the manufacturing facility is (mostly China) by truck, rail and ship.
· Then the energy intensive manufacturing process powered by fossil fuels.
· Then transported again by truck, rail, and ship to the ultimate destination which of course has to be prepared (cleared) using fossil fuel powered machinery, site assembly using fossil fuel powered machinery, life cycle maintenance – which for wind turbines at least requires fossil fuel powered machinery along with petroleum based lubricants, for solar, maybe just water to clean – imagine how much water would be needed to clean the enormous industrial solar arrays being promoted.
· Then of course ultimate decommissioning and disposal with the added benefit that since these things have a relatively short life span, the entire process needs to be repeated far more frequently than just using coal, gas or nuclear power plants to begin with, all of which require far less land.
· According to Mark Mills in https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/mines-minerals-green-energy-reality-checkMM.pdf, “compared with hydrocarbons, green machines entail, on average, a 10-fold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy”.
· And of course, both wind and solar need a backup system for the times the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine adding to overall system cost. The net is, wind and solar are far more environmentally destructive than simply using fossil fuels to begin with given that wind and solar are pretty much 100% dependent on fossil fuels from cradle to grave and if anything, only increase FF consumption. Proponents of wind and solar claim that the fuel is free while completely ignoring the enormous amount of mining and infrastructure required to capture the “free” fuel. Wind and solar are weather dependent, intermittent, variable, expensive and unreliable. They are parasitic energy sources that require 100% backup by fossil fuels.
Completely off topic, but we have a poster here who likes to proclaim that forcing everyone to use public transit is the ideal solution for society.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/long-island-rail-road-workers-go-strike-leaving-330000-commuters-without-service-busiest-us-rail-line
One factor that would help local communities properly evaluate these projects pre-construction, would be to ban the use of “nameplare” production. Communities and land owners should demand the use of “accredited capacity” calculated for the location, weather and degradation over time. This would provide a realistic way of determining long term value of these projects.
My 3.125 KW solar panels have been producing electricity for more than 10 years. The 10 year average of my system’s production is 9.2% of nameplate. This is in California’s Central Coast, where we have a high percentage of sunny days, except in the rainy winter. Elsewhere in the US, the production would be lower. As PV panels age, their efficiency drops.
I doubt that many wind or PV projects would be approved if they were evaluated based not on nameplate, but rather on accredited capacity over the actual project lifetime.
According to the IEA there is
“Mounting evidence that solar panels installed in the early 2010s, particularly in utility scale projects, are now being replaced in many instances after just 10 – 15 years of operation because the technology is outdated or performance has degraded”
IEA ‘World Energy Outlook 2025’ (Nov. 2025)
For a good explanation of accredited capacity – https://energybadboys.substack.com/p/solars-land-use-problem-is-much-worse
Actually I like them using nameplate. When you show what they actually produce to uniformed they begin to understand the dishonesty and stupidity.
In Ontario, the Green Energy Act of 2009 specifically exempted all wind/solar projects from all municipal official plans or land use designations. If such a project was approved by the Province, they could be sited anywhere regardless of surrounding land use. And, the municipality had no legal basis to challenge any project.
This usurpation of landowner rights and municipal powers was a major reason why the Wynne government was thrashed in the 2018 elections and the Ontario Liberals were demoted to non-Party status.
It should be noted that the principal authors of the 2009 Green Energy Act were the same ones constituting the leadership behind the useless government of Justin Trudeau, 2015-2024. The arrogance of Gerald Butts and Katie Telford was only surpassed by their utter stupidity. During their careers, they managed to utterly destroy two Liberal governments, one provincial and one national.
And yet Butts is still on Carney’s “team”, working alongside Mrs Carney in New York City.
The cabal never disintegrates, just gets more dodgy.
He’s also chair of the Eurasia Group. Canadian politics was too hot for him after his role in the SNC-Lavalin scandal. This worthless swine was caught trying to pressure Canada’s Attorney General regarding a CRIMINAL prosecution.
Butts is far beyond just dodgy. He counselled the Prime Minister to commit criminal activity by interfering with the AG.
Here are details that might be of keen interest to anyone trying to understand how the GEA was orchestrated: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7920021/
Thank you, Gary Abernathy, for expressing the regret that rural residents, who had no idea what was going to happen to their communities because of the incursion of industrial scale renewables, are having to deal with. Those who decided not to abandon their land and their homes are the victims of an agenda they could not have comprehended. Even if they could foresee all of this, they were powerless to oppose it.
And yes, the leaseholders were desperate for the money.
Solar and Wind aren’t inexpensive to install at utility scale. They’re even, Relatively speaking, more expensive to install for individual business as there isn’t the “Economy of Scale” involved. ( Utility scale On-Shore Wind costs between $1.3M per MW while a single 10MW will cost $15M) So Government involvement was necessary in the form of both regulation and subsidization in order to make them profitable for the initial Big Green Investment. And Activism was required to create Government Regulations needed to Force Unreliable Energy into being.
A lot of towns in rural, scenic New Hampshire got snookered into accepting wind installations on nearby hills and mountains by slick, fast-talking wind execs. I’m guessing many of them are now experiencing “buyer’s remorse”.
Copper is $6.26 per pound. Have been any attempts by thieves trying to steal the copper? Do the wind turbines have security systems that alert the police when thieves break into the wind turbine?
It’s good to see citizens and governments taking such a determined stand on this issue. Once they realized that wind and solar are unreliable, yet costly, and taking over historically productive agricultural areas, they banded together to put the brakes on further such development. If there is going to be a big transition to alternate energy, consumers want to be reliable without causing escalating electricity bills supposedly in the name of saving the planet.