Here are some FACTS about the dirty “clean energy” movement to understand why this fight to stop it is worth it.
What’s wrong with solar farms and wind turbines?
Besides ruining the views of our countryside and the wildlife that so many of us in rural areas enjoy, many have experienced negative effects from living next to these projects. They’re also inefficient, unreliable, unsustainable, and support China.
The only reason solar and wind are so popular is because of the substantial subsidies, as the chart below illustrates. Without the subsidies, these wind and solar farms would not be as popular or pushed as hard as they are over greener, more reliable forms of energy.
From the bright glare of the solar panels, the noise from the solar panel trackers getting off track, and/or the buzzing of the solar panel inverters, to the whooshing sound of wind turbines, losing the enjoyment of pools, patios, yards, and gardens decreases the quality of life of those unfortunate enough to live next to a wind or solar farm.
Those are some of the complaints after the solar and wind farms are constructed. During construction, many have complained about the trash from the construction workers and project blowing all over their property, workers playing loud music, and the noise of solar panel posts being pounded into the ground from sunrise to sunset seven days a week for months on end.
With all the dirt work required to prepare the land, dust storms ruining any outside enjoyment are also common during construction, as well as roads being torn up, and not repaired, by large amounts of constant traffic. Maniacal driving of the construction crews has also been an issue for residents who’ve endured it.
Add all those negatives to the fact that solar panels are extremely inefficient. The efficiency rate on the average solar panel is only 17% to 20%. The hotter it is, the less efficient the solar panels are. If they get dust or snow on them, they also lose efficiency. The quality of the other components, as well as installation also can affect efficiency.
Those living near wind turbines have shared their numerous stories of health issues like headaches, insomnia, and dizziness. Then there’s the noise the turbines nearly constantly generate, light flicker in their homes from the sun behind the turning blades, and constant flashing red lights at night. Property values of those living near wind turbines have also been decimated and many sit on the market for years before finding a buyer.
Wind turbines are also not as durable as we have been led to believe. There are reports of turbines catching fire, collapsing, blades flying off or disintegrating, covering the land below with fiberglass pieces. Also, ice or broken debris being flung thousands of feet, sometimes going through roofs and walls, and oil leaks, living in close proximity to a wind turbine is hardly safe and they are anything but green.
There’s also the potential of the land and water, including groundwater, being contaminated by the fiberglass pieces and oil spills. Residents have had their wells contaminated and in some cases, collapse, after wind turbine tower beams were driven into the shale bedrock. The beams caused cracking in the shale, allowing sediment to pollute their water, and in some cases, collapse their wells.
Solar farms risk water poisoning from the galvanized posts that the solar panels are mounted to, or the solar panels themselves leaching, causing contamination in landfills or if they become broken or catch fire and water penetrates the insides.
In conclusion, there are A LOT of things about wind and solar farms to be concerned about and we’ve only scratched the surface. Throughout this website, we’ve added links to sources and additional information. This will help everyone do their own research and see all the evidence of those concerns and also why the goal of converting to “green” energy isn’t as easy as just putting up some solar panels and wind turbines.
People should be able to do whatever they want with their own property.
In most cases, we’d agree. But when many people suffer the consequences of a few peoples’ choices with their property for the next 20 to 40 years to forever, sometimes that belief has to be re-evaluated.
The companies behind installing these green energy projects are out to make a profit and they are being highly subsidized by our government to get them done as quickly as possible. With all the money being thrown at them, they are saying and doing everything they can to get these wind and solar projects built.
That includes ignoring health and safety concerns, not being truthful about the sounds and sights these projects make, and ignoring concerns and complaints by residents going to be affected or already affected by their projects.
These renewable energy companies are not looking out for the landowners, the neighbors, the community, the land, the wildlife, the planet, or anyone else, despite what they say. They are only looking out for themselves. Once the project is built and they are getting all their benefits from it, even likely already sold the project to another company, they move on to the next project without looking back.
Once these green energy companies get leases secured for wind or solar farms, how to get that electricity in and out of the area has to be dealt with. There may or may not be room in the existing electrical grid for a large quantity of additional electricity to be added. That means more transmission lines and substations have to be built to handle the extra electricity being made.
The problem with the sudden need for additional transmission lines and substations is that people who currently have reliable and affordable electricity and didn’t ask for and don’t want that to change, aren’t asked or given an option about these new additions. If state or federal governing agencies in charge of the electrical grid (MISO and FERC) or for issuing permits (PSC) for letting these companies build transmission lines or substations approve them, they are most likely going to be built.
Some of those companies, like Grain Belt Express, have been granted the authority to use eminent domain to get whatever property they feel is needed for their transmission lines. You may live 20 miles from someone who decided to lease their land to wind or solar, but because of what they decided to do on their property, it’s possible that you now have to allow a giant high-voltage transmission line to be built through your property or by your house. Not only will it affect your views, it will most definitely affect your home’s value.
Suddenly, a small group’s decision of what they do on their own property and for their own monetary benefit is now negatively affecting many other residents’ properties. For many, that means the remaining years of their lives. While those few landowners will make money from their land decision, many others will lose not only money but also their enjoyment and in some cases, health and safety.
Don’t you want to save the planet?
Of course. But not at the expense of exploiting poor countries or children or creating mass pollution from the mining, manufacturing, shipping, installation, and disposal of these millions of “clean” energy products.
There is certainly nothing “clean” or “green” about the mining, shipping, and installation that is done using gas and diesel-powered equipment, the coal-powered plants in China that are making most of the solar panels while using poisonous chemicals during the manufacturing process, or the landfills here in the U.S. and in poor countries that old, broken, or less efficient solar panels will be sent to.
The very sad part is that many people are all too willing to look past all of the negatives, including the fact that this industry is being so heavily subsidized, making there be so much incentive, that what is actually good for the entire planet and all its inhabitants, or for our electrical grid, is in reality, being ignored for the sake of mass profits.
Meanwhile, there is no shortage of people in the public and private sectors demanding we all switch to “clean” wind and solar to combat climate change. They seem oblivious to the realities of the massive pollution involved in manufacturing all those wind and solar products, which is pretty easy to research.
Perhaps they know how dirty, destructive, dangerous, and ultimately unreliable wind and solar are, but enjoy feeling like a well-informed climate savior just repeating what they heard on tv while secretly feeling like those poor people in other countries making all of them should sacrifice their country’s water, land, and air for ours? Either way, you are still burning your house down whether you’re starting fires in your kitchen or your spare bedroom.
Nobody is even talking about how the planet is going to safely handle millions of discarded solar panels and wind turbines. Why aren’t they? Because there is no good, economical way to recycle any of them. According to the epa.gov website, by 2030, the United States is expected to have as much as one million total tons of solar panel waste. By 2050, the U.S. is expected to have the second-largest number of end-of-life panels in the world, with as many as an estimated 10 million total tons of panels.
Decommissioned wind turbine blades in the U.S. alone are estimated to be 1.5 million metric tons by 2040 and 2.2 million metric tons by 2050. While there has been plenty of years and plenty of money thrown at putting the wind turbines up, cost-effectively disposing of them seems to have been pushed to the back burner.
Need more proof? Here’s a recent article written by a power systems engineer with more than 60 years of experience working on projects around the world explaining why wind and solar won’t ever be the ‘savior’ it’s being made out to be.
Won’t companies have plenty of time before the solar panels are at the end of their life to build recycling centers for them?
In a perfect world, yes. Unfortunately, despite enacting the ‘Solar Investment Tax Credit‘ in 2006 to encourage people to invest in solar energy, apparently, no plans on how to safely dispose of them at the end of their life were made.
Again, while claiming to be about saving the planet, this movement is more about making money. It’s much, much cheaper, and easier to just throw the solar panels away than recycle them. The solar panel manufacturers certainly don’t want to spend more money on recycled solar panels, so the old ones are sent to landfills, shipped to poorer countries to be used in their diminished capacity, or sent to landfills in poor countries. Out of sight, out of mind.
From 2020 to 2050 in the modeled baseline conditions, approximately 80% of modules are landfilled, 1% are reused, and 10% are recycled. With today’s material recovery rate, the recycled mass totals just 0.7 million metric tons through 2050, or approximately 8%. ~ National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Don’t you want to save money on a cheaper electric bill from the free sun and wind?
Despite those claims being made, the opposite is true. Electricity rates in nearly every state rose from March 2022 to March 2023.
While many believe that adding “free” wind and solar electricity to the mix is going to cause electricity rates to go down and that will mostly be all that is necessary to achieve net zero, as the Biden Administration has indicated is the goal.
Unfortunately, the entire green energy push to net zero will require a lot of other changes besides using the sun and wind as power. Here’s an excerpt from the World Economic Forum’s article on the price of a green economy:
Impact of the green economy on consumers
The most noticeable impacts on everyday lives will include rising energy bills, job losses in high-emission industries, changes in what people eat, and increasing outgoings to end our dependence on fossil fuels to heat homes and travel, the report says.
Transitioning the energy sector to zero carbon and beefing up electricity grids to cope with an expected doubling of global demand by 2050 will push up bills by 25% between 2020 and 2040, the report predicts.
Even when the necessary changes have been made, electricity prices will still be 20% higher by 2050, although technological innovations may help to soften the price rises. Costs could be significantly higher if producers fail to build flexible and reliable low-cost power grids.
Although moving away from fossil fuels will cost 185 million jobs, the green economy will create 200 million new roles by 2050, including eight million in renewable power, hydrogen and biofuels, the report says.
Consumers will face the cost of replacing home heating systems and cars that run on fossil fuels, and will have to change their diets to avoid high-emission foods such as meat. However, the total costs of owning and running an electric vehicle will be lower than those for a petrol or diesel vehicle in most parts of the world by 2025, McKinsey says.
Solar panels are safe. People put them on their roofs all the time and nothing bad happens.
There’s a big difference between having 20 panels on your roof and having 100,000 or more of them sitting out in a field. Despite what the solar developers may claim, the panels DO contain toxic metals, that if broken and exposed to water, can leak out of the panels onto the ground. A few panels wouldn’t be nearly the concern 100,000, or in many cases, a few hundred thousand of them would be. In addition, there are no studies backing up any of their claims about the fields being returned unharmed at the end of their lease.
These wind and solar farms really help farmers financially
We understand that. But at what cost? The reliability of our electricity? The cost of our electric bills? The loss of enjoyment and value of others’ property? The harm, death, and loss of habitat and food that local wildlife will suffer, including our majestic bald eagles? The loss of land that produces food either for us or for the animals that we eat? The potential contamination of the land and water? Relationships with neighbors and in the community?
The companies offering farmers generous amounts per acre for their land are in business to make money. Maybe they really believe they are saving the planet also, but the fact is that they are making money. That’s never been easier thanks to our government’s overzealous subsidies that no other clean (and reliable) industry, like nuclear, is getting comparably subsidized for. Even China is using loopholes in the inflation act to cash in to get paid by our government to get their solar panels placed on millions of acres of prime land all over the U.S.
John Kerry, who Biden named Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, recently declared at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM for Climate Summit, “We can’t get to net-zero, we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution.” He’s gone on the record at numerous events touting how agriculture is a big contributor to methane and how his and other world leaders’ lives depend on farmers ceasing their operations.
Cows have already been targeted as part of the cause of the “climate crisis” as bugs and lab-grown meat is mentioned more and more in the news. Meanwhile, farmland all over the world is being switched over to industrial solar and wind turbine fields, as the World Bank and United Nations are warning of food shortages.
In addition to adding to the obvious push to make farming obsolete, allowing wind and solar farms to be built can quickly change a beautiful, quiet rural community into a noisy, ugly industrial wind and solar area covered in high-voltage transmission lines, and large power substations.
None of these major infrastructure changes can be easily or completely removed if/when a company goes bankrupt, the lease is up, or it’s deemed wind and solar are too costly, too land-intensive, or too inefficient to generate reliable on-demand electricity, and the projects are abandoned.
Where else would they put solar panels since it will take so many to save the planet?
Over parking lots and on the roofs of homes, business buildings, warehouses, and apartments in the cities that need the energy instead of transmitting it hundreds or thousands of miles from rural areas via transmission lines.
Add in all the empty lots or houses that need to be demolished, freeing up additional space, that could also include solar panels, and there are more than enough places to put solar panels that won’t destroy our valuable farmland.
How will I know if I’m going to be affected?
Typically, solar farm developers look for large acreages within a couple of miles of a substation. If you have a substation nearby, you or your neighbors may already be targets.
However, recently, several landowners with smaller parcels of land have received letters from renewables companies espousing the benefits of solar farm leases.
Possibly, they are seeking out smaller parcels of land to put together as a larger project. No one is safe, especially the elderly, who these companies will try to befriend and manipulate. Talk to your neighbors and be aware.
There is so much misinformation out there about all of this, how do I know what to believe?
The old adage “Follow the money” is always a pretty good determination of which direction to look for the truth.
Seeking out sources for information that aren’t mainstream and using alternative uncensored search engines like Yandex are better ways to get more truthful information about any popular subject or topic in the news. Keep in mind the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 when any big news story, event, or “crisis” comes along.
And lastly, educate yourself. Being educated is what these wind and solar companies fear most. If you only believe what the wind/solar/transmission line companies say, the media or even our government officials say, you will not be fully or correctly informed.
You won’t hear any of them talk about how Germany, often cited as the world’s first “renewable energy economy” has suffered immensely with their decision to switch over to sun and wind.