McGraw Fellow Details County-Level Efforts to Block Renewable Power for USA TODAY
(Photo: Ronald W. Erdrich, The Abilene Reporter-News Via USA TODAY NETWORK)
In the final installment of a three-year, multi-part investigation published by USA TODAY, McGraw Fellow Elizabeth Weise examined the growing backlash against renewable power that’s spreading across the country.
Weise found that nearly a quarter of U.S. counties – 24 percent — have now enacted regulations that make it virtually impossible to build new wind and solar projects. Thanks in part to the Trump Administration’s opposition to alternative energy, that’s a sharp increase from the end of 2023, when Weise reported in an earlier series that 15% of U.S. counties had effectively banned or blocked the infrastructure needed to harness wind and solar power.
Weise’s work on the investigation was supported by the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
In her latest stories, Weise explores the reasons behind that growing opposition, while also highlighting the experience of several rural communities that have benefitted from allowing wind or solar infrastructure to be built.
Links to Weise’s stories, which were published online on February 21, are below. They will also be published in the print edition of USA Today on Friday, May 13.
It’s getting hard to build wind and solar farms across America, a USA TODAY investigation shows, although they can boost the local economy, provide clean energy.
Bringing wind and solar farms to rural American counties like this one in Indiana isn’t about green energy, it’s about greenbacks.
Across the country the arrival of wind and solar farms has stirred controversy. But in Juab, Utah, the community welcomed solar – and is benefitting.
USA TODAY calculated restrictions on wind and solar energy projects by looking at the restrictions states and counties imposed on their development.
The main findings from USA Today’s three-year investigation into the opposition to clean energy.
Some objections to wind and solar farms are matters of opinion. Others are based on false information.
An overview of renewable energy regulation and policies in place for all 50 states has been uploaded to Scribd.