JACKSON: Valley residents are growing alarmed by solar-and-battery project taking over farmland. Here's why.
We’ve been assured for quite some time that wind and solar are the energy sources of the future. If so, their development needs to be accelerated because they are not being well received by locals. Their low energy density is partly, if not largely, to blame.
Fresno County residents are unhappy with a planned solar-and-battery project coming to their community. Roughly 15 square miles of retired agricultural fields in the western part of the county are to eventually be home to one “of the world’s largest solar and battery energy storage projects — a behemoth capable of powering some 850,000 homes for four hours,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Darden Clean Energy Project, says the Times, “is the first development to be fast-tracked under a 2022 state law that allows large renewable energy projects to be reviewed and permitted without sign-off from county and municipal governments.” The California Energy Commission gave its blessing in June.
The locals, however, see a curse instead.
While size is a concern, it’s not the only one. People don’t want to suffer through the noise of wind turbines, which, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, “does seem to increase the risk of annoyance and self-reported sleep disturbance in a dose-response relationship.”
Nor do they want endless solar arrays ruining their views of the rural landscape, and converting farmland and forests “into geometric rows of indigo panels.”
Not all locals are against the project, of course. There are supporters who speak glowingly of the hundreds of jobs created by construction; tax revenues that, in the words of Kerman Mayor Maria Pacheco, “will be transformative for the San Joaquin Valley”; and predicted local economic benefits.
Opponents, though, feel as if they’ve been run over.
Espi Sandoval, a board member for the nonprofit Rural Communities Rising, complained to the Times that residents were “forgotten by the government” and “now we’ve got this private sector coming in with these huge solar panel farms.” Locals’ concerns are merely an afterthought, the story tells us, with communities having “little leverage to reduce potential impacts.”
Even the executive director of the Central California Environmental Justice Network is troubled about the local impacts.
It’s a given that in 2025, any new energy project is going to encounter resistance. But a far smaller site that would provide as much, if not more, power would generate less fuss. For instance, a natural gas plant producing the 1,150 megawatts the Darden site is to generate would require only about 40 acres miles, not 9,600, and likely would meet with fewer objections. A nuclear facility could get the same job done using only 3% of that 15-square-mile tract.
“Energy policy and land-use policy are two sides of the same coin,” says energy author Robert Bryce. “The fundamental problem with alt-energy projects like solar and wind is that they have huge footprints – and as California policymakers push for more and more solar and wind development, rural communities across the state are fighting back.”
Embracing energy sources with high power density – such as natural gas and nuclear – is “the best no-regret strategy” for establishing smaller footprints, Bryce added. While these sources might “still face opposition, their land-use requirements are tiny fractions of what’s needed for solar and wind.”
What is happening in Fresno County is not unique. “Fierce opposition from rural landowners,” Bryce wrote in The Hill, is going to cause Britain’s net-zero ambitions to fail.
“They are telling the owners of proposed solar and wind projects to take their oceans of photovoltaic panels and forests of giant turbines and put them somewhere the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.”
Bryce keeps a database that tracks renewable energy project rejections in the U.S. In roughly the last decade, nearly 900 have been ditched or restricted, including 82 this year. More than 500 wind farms and more than 360 solar operations have been scrapped or limited in scope.
As many as a dozen renewables schemes have been rebuffed in net-zero-crazed California. Even Los Angeles County has curbed “green” energy expansion. A decade ago, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ban wind turbines in unincorporated parts of the county.
A few turbines and a handful of solar panels would be better tolerated by locals. But the small scale would hardly produce enough energy to justify their existences. Until renewables can compete with conventional sources on energy density, they will continue to breed opposition.