Lack of expertise in policy making leads to misinformed decisions
Simon 22 – Julia Simon is the Climate Solutions reporter on NPR's Climate Desk, a graduate of the University of Chicago and studied international energy and climate change as a KSP scholar at the Sciences Po in Paris, (“Misinformation is derailing renewable energy projects across the United States”, 3/28/22, https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1086790531/renewable-energy-projects-wind-energy-solar-energy-climate-change-misinformation)//CG
Misinformation gets mixed up in decisions over renewable projects
Last year, a Department of Energy study found that setback regulations now represent the single-greatest barrier to securing locations for wind projects in the U.S. Setbacks limit how close wind projects can be to buildings, and Mills says they often make sense to reduce things such as noise and "shadow flicker," the moving shadows and strobing sunlight that turbines can cast onto buildings. But she says misinformation can fuel setbacks that are more stringent than needed and sometimes act as outright bans on renewable energy.
In Ohio, setbacks and other rules associated with renewable projects have historically been set at the state level. But in October, a new law, SB 52, went into effect giving counties the ability to make exclusion zones with no utility-scale wind and solar projects.
Kitson, the science teacher, testified in support of the zones, arguing that turbines negatively affect property values. He pointed to his group's analysis comparing the lower property values in the one local township that has wind turbines to the higher average property values in the greater county.
But Ben Hoen, a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says his more than 15 years of research has shown that wind turbines have little to no impact on nearby property values. Hoen says, "We have not found evidence of property value impacts despite studying it over multiple periods of time."
Hoen does say that studies in the Netherlands and United Kingdom have found some effects on property values, but they were far smaller than Kitson's reference to studies showing a 20%-40% depreciation.
In about half of states, regulations around how and whether to build rural utility-scale solar and wind are determined on the local level, Mills says. "These local officials are not necessarily experts in energy," she says. "And so when you have people coming and stating things as facts, especially if there's nobody fact-checking everything, right, it's difficult. They're certainly making decisions based on what they're hearing."