Is race a major factor behind opposition to wind farms?

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News (hyperlink to the original story), a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.

A new paper examines how pervasive wind energy opposition is in North America and the predictors of this resistance. It comes to some provocative conclusions, including this: Much of the local pushback comes from predominantly white, wealthy residents at the expense of minority communities who are more likely to live near fossil fuel plants that emit dangerous amounts of pollution.

Inside Climate News has written a lot about local opposition to energy projects, including our 2022 series about resistance to solar power in Ohio, and our story this year about an Illinois law that reduces local governments’ power to kill projects.

So, does the paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, agree with what ICN has found? In some ways, yes. In others, no.

First, let’s hear from one of the co-authors, Jessica Lovering, co-founder of the nonprofit Good Energy Collective, an organization whose mission is to “build a progressive case for nuclear energy.”

“The wealthy and whiter communities have both the resources in terms of money but also the political power in a lot of these communities,” she said. “They’re the ones that can show up to town hall meetings to protest a project.”

With a few exceptions, much of the existing scientific literature that examines opposition to clean energy development is based on individual regional or case studies, she said. These are helpful when understanding the context and nuances in specific communities, but don’t provide a full picture of the national situation.

The authors compiled a list of completed wind projects from government databases. They then pulled demographic data and news articles published between 2000 and 2016 that covered those…