The War on Renewable Energy

The Pacific Northwest is in the middle of a renewable energy boom.

State legislatures, policy leaders, and voters have aggressively set carbon reduction targets over the last decade – paving the way for a new wave of federal dollars to drive the development and construction of wind, solar, and battery storage facilities across the region.

New developments have always generated an element of local resistance. But none have proven to be as divisive as renewable energy. And despite the anti-woke, post-truth messaging from one unusually loud climate denier (see here), these divisions don't necessarily follow predictable ideological fault lines.

Increasingly, fossil fuel interests and die-hard environmentalists have found a convenient allyship in this war against renewable development. Together, they are injecting a new kind of collective opposition that has created a strange new coalition that is part land-use watch dog, part liberal NIMBYist, and part climate change skeptic.

The challenge to developers, energy leaders, and policymakers isn’t just local opposition to change. It’s that many of these communities are now drowning in a sea of misinformation about questionable claims about renewable energy’s impact on everything from water quality to public safety to their reliability.

In the latest episode of the Better Communities Podcast, our team explores the misinformation war on renewable energy in the Pacific Northwest.

Listen in as we talk about the social, economic, and environmental consequences of this misinformation war with Ruchi Sadhir from the Oregon Department of Energy, Jillian Farmer of New Project Media, Nicole Hughes from Renewable Northwest, Jake Melder from Clenera, Commissioner Derrick DeGroot of Klamath County, and labor and construction trade advocate Willy Myers.