(Solar photovoltaic panels. Photo by Roberto Dziura at Scopio)
As though on cue, Saturday morning BBC Radio 4 aired a segment about proposed wind power on the other side of the UK. The segment consisted mostly of locals bemoaning the pylons to support cables that would carry power from proposed wind farms.
They aren’t concerned about electromagnetic fields. They aren’t concerned about whether our wind farms use turbine designs that are more hazardous to birds than necessary, or need more maintenance than other designs, or anything like that. They are outraged about having to see pylons. Keeping a pristine view is more important to them than anything else. They want the power cables buried and expect the higher cost of doing that to be absorbed by someone else.
Several years ago we had a similar outcry in my part of the UK about a proposed onshore wind farm and the pylons to carry its power. That project fell apart. Its business case was too weak. But the outcry was the same.
The complainers aren’t lifting a finger to make the wind farms unnecessary. To the contrary, I remember discussions about this in the homes of project opponents who were burning wood or coal for heat. Some of the same people were involved in Extinction Rebellion. They got a sense of virtue from participating in protests without necessarily having to make inconvenient changes at home.
They want all the ease of having power at the flick of a switch when they want it, but they want all the burden of providing it to be elsewhere.
Today’s radio presenter asked one of the people he interviewed whether they were NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). The interviewee admitted the label fits, then carried on complaining.
I have no sympathy with such complainers. Mine isn’t a popular position.
Large Scale versus Small Scale
All manner of decisions involve trade-offs. Concentrating energy production in a relatively small number of large facilities offers more than economies of scale. Some methods of energy production are not really feasible any other way. That’s why I grew up in air that was such a petrochemical stew, it killed off the insects dramatically. When I was a small child, we had to stop at least once, usually twice, on each hundred mile drive to or from Houston. We had to clear bugs off the windshield so we could see and off the radiator grill so the car’s engine cooling system could still cope. By the time I reached high school, we could drive to and from Houston without needing to clean the windshield or grill once. The sky pulsed orange at night from the refineries and petrochemical plants. Jefferson County, Harris County and Freeport where this industry was most heavily concentrated had the highest incidence of cancers and the highest incidence of rare cancers in Texas.
We lived with this so the rest of the country could drive cars and trucks, run power plants, heat homes and operate factories. Before my generation, the same refineries supplied Britain during World War II. Now, the area is shipping liquified natural gas to the UK and continental Europe as nearly everyone pivots away from Russian supply.
But small scale energy production has its strengths, too.
Ukraine has been suffering dramatic examples of the vulnerability of relying on big centralized power plants. Losing one plant can cause a swathe of a country to go dark. In contrast, a single catastrophe in a single place rarely takes out all the home or single-facility power production. If my village loses power, our store Stans can still be open thanks to a roof covered with solar panels.
The Momentum of Many
I confess that I love a nice wood fire. A few years ago I looked into replacing our electric fake fireplace with a real high efficiency wood stove or perhaps a gas fire. Looked into it, but didn’t do it.
Not all of us can afford to install solar panels and/or the microwind turbines allowed at a home by the UK’s rules. Each of us who does will make only a negligible impact. But the more we do it, the less need there will be for big centralized power generation. Together, we have momentum. Together, we can cut the need for those pylons people don’t want to have to see.
The UK is transitioning away from gasoline and diesel for vehicles. Sale of new cars running on fossil fuels ends here by 2030. By 2035, all new vehicles must issue zero polluting emissions.
That doesn’t necessarily mean all vehicles will be electric. Maybe some will run on hydrogen, which issues water as its combustion product. Maybe some will run on fuel cells that don’t exist yet. We’re heading for mostly electric vehicles, though, in the near future. We’ll taper off the gasoline and diesel.
If enough of us charge our cars with electricity we generate at home, we won’t need big new power plants. Putting in a solar system costs more than putting in a wood stove, which is why it has taken a while for our household to be ready do it. But before you say it’s too expensive, the cost of a solar PV system with battery storage for a typical UK house is less than half the cost of most used electric cars that aren’t too close to the end of life for their battery packs. That was even true even before the chip shortage that has made used cars gain value relative to new cars.
IMBY
You see where this takes us, right? If we want to be NIMBY about pylons, the most effective way to do that is not to scream and shout to move it all to someone else’s back yard.
The most effective way to be NIMBY about pylons, big wind farms, nuclear power plants and fossil fuel powered generators is to reduce the need for them.
That means being very much IMBY about doing whatever little bit we can ourselves.