Field notes The Energy Transition for the Rest of Us

Steel For Fuel N° 017 of 56 1 Aug 2024

Locals Against Renewables

by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners

2 min readOriginal essay

In this note
  1. 01The question
  2. 02The answer
  3. 03The argument
  4. 04What you need to know first
  5. 05Details worth keeping
  6. 06Claims worth citing
  7. 07Where it’s contested

The question

How much do local restrictions matter, against everything else slowing renewables down?

The answer

Less than the macro constraints for now, but rising fast enough to be a serious concern, and hard to fix.

03The argument

He frames local ordinances as an often overlooked but increasingly important factor. They are still not as problematic as the macro variables he lists: interest rates, profitability pressure and transmission congestion. At the rate they are accumulating, though, he treats them as a serious concern, and an awkward one, because permitting authority in the United States is split across national, state and local government, leaving no single lever to pull. His fix is two-sided: cut federal review rules he thinks add bureaucracy without preventing much environmental damage, while accepting that projects spanning thousands of acres will always need permits, which is why permitting software appeals to him. He closes outward: his sense is that increasingly undeniable limits on renewables growth are pushing more people towards nuclear.

04What you need to know first

BANANA
His footnoted gloss: “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.”
The ADVANCE Act
, which he expands as Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy.

05Details worth keeping

  • The chart is from “Opposition to Renewable Energy Facilities in the United States: June 2024 Edition”, Columbia Law School, with his firm’s analysis of earlier editions; a second chart is uncaptioned.
  • Offshore wind he judges more exposed to NIMBYs and BANANAs than onshore wind and solar, and says the Vineyard Wind blade failure and the closures that followed will not help.
  • He names the permitting platform Transect approvingly, and files the trend under his phrase “The Adolescence of Renewables”.

06Claims worth citing

All figures as stated on 2024-08-01. The trend is read off a chart.

  • The ADVANCE Act is now law. Lubershane
  • Local restrictions are accumulating; the tally itself is in the figure, not in the prose. Columbia Law School, June 2024, with EIP analysis, presented by Lubershane

07Where it’s contested

Nothing is disputed; there is no second voice. The load-bearing claim, that the rise is serious, rests entirely on a chart this note cannot see. The link from permitting to a nuclear revival is marked as his sense, not evidence, and he endorses both deregulation and a named vendor without testing either.

Cite as: “Locals Against Renewables,” The Energy Transition for the Rest of Us, note on Steel For Fuel, August 1, 2024. CC BY 4.0. View the Markdown

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