Clean energy is banned faster than it's built

Was there a project you started before the COVID-19 pandemic? And maybe you're picking it back up now?

This happened to Paste BN national correspondent Elizabeth Weise: In February 2020, she was driving through Kansas interviewing farmers about renewable energy techniques. She was curious how wind turbines provided additional income to agricultural businesses across America. Through her interviews she noticed something: people were showing up to protest wind energy in local communities.

Why were they fighting green energy? Would their demonstrations do anything to curb new investments in American renewable infrastructure?

She held on to that question. Then, four years later, she dived headfirst into answering it for an exclusive yearlong investigation for Paste BN.

👋 Nicole Fallert here, and welcome to Your Week, our newsletter exclusively for Paste BN subscribers (that's you!). This week, we talk with Weise and her reporting partner Suhail Bhat about their unprecedented analysis into renewable energy in the U.S. and how communities are banning this form of power more than they're building it.

But first, don't miss these stories made possible by your Paste BN subscription (and keep scrolling for more top stories from the newsroom!):

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Has renewable energy been banned in your county?

In the time between now and that 2020 reporting trip to Kansas, Weise was shocked by how many U.S. counties have blocked wind and solar power development.

She has spent the last year and a half scouring the country's 3,144 counties across all 50 states to build a list of every spot that has banned renewables. These bans come at the same time the U.S. has set a target to reach 100% clean energy by 2035, a goal that depends on building large-scale solar and wind power, Paste BN analysis shows reaching that target isn't a sure thing.

Together with Bhat, she dived into the data and found that local governments in America are banning green energy faster than they’re building it. 

"This is an example of Paste BN's national reach," Weise said of the exclusive analysis of this trend across the country.

Read Paste BN's series on renewable energy bans across the nation:

• The big picture: Paste BN has found at least 15% of counties in the U.S. have effectively halted new utility-scale wind, solar or both.
• What's the argument against green energy? Debates over toxicity, bird deaths and exports.
• They hoped solar panels would secure the future of their farm. Then their neighbors found out.
• These maps and graphics show how U.S. counties are blocking the future of renewable energy.
• Want more detail on Paste BN's data? Here's how we crunched the numbers.

Most data that journalists work with is provided by research groups or governments. In this case, Paste BN's journalists went out and produced their own original insights on county-specific renewable bans in an effort to contextualize what the nation's push for renewables looks like on the ground.

"All the data was completely new and novel," said Bhat, who helped make sense of the numbers. The number of bans translated to anti-renewable sentiment among farming communities across the country and declining positive support for these investments.

Most journalists wouldn't take on the painstaking task of finding and recording county-specific data on renewable energy bans because it's simply just too much work to balance with the pace of the average news cycle. The Paste BN difference is seen in the way the newsroom makes space for these kinds of projects, Weise said. And this isn't just data you can crunch on a calculator − it requires writing a program to synthesize and make sense of the data sets.

"Codifying the impact of these bans feels like a huge task," Bhat said. "It was a massive undertaking putting together the research to build a data set. It's unimaginable, a huge amount of work."

They also had to decide how a "ban" would be defined in the reporting, given the swath of anti-renewable legislation they were tracing. Weise interviewed 139 experts to make sure the discussion accurately represented what these bans do.

"I feel like we added to the research and discourse on renewables," Bhat said. "We produced something original that researchers were afraid to touch because they didn't want to get into the policy debate."

The team created a searchable database so you can go in and find your own county and learn what the legal landscape is for renewable energy. Check it out here.

And the work isn't finished: Just days before our journalists filed the story, they discovered what was effectively a new ban on wind projects in Kent County, Delaware. They quickly added the county to their story, a stark reminder of the fact that governments across the U.S. are moving swiftly to make it impossible to build utility-scale renewable projects.

Thank you

I'm amazed by Suhail and Elizabeth's dedication and detail-orientated work. I'm going to go search my county's renewable ban status. In the meantime, thank you for supporting our journalism with your subscription. Our work wouldn't be possible without you. 

Best wishes, 

Nicole Fallert