Community obstacles to large scale solar: NIMBY and renewables

The need to decrease dependency on fossil fuels has never been more evident. Wind and solar energy sources offer promise, but siting can present obstacles. While resistance to wind and massive solar projects has, to some extent, been explored, larger, residential, ground-mounted solar projects, requiring many acres of land, and largely dependent on the receptivity of a local community for successful adoption, have largely been left unexamined. This case study explores the resistance of residents in one suburban, New England town, to a large-scale (2 MW), ground-mounted solar project in a residential neighborhood. The case study incorporates a mixed methodology of participant observation, interview, content analysis, social media activism, and participatory action research. Both the centralized nature of large scale residential solar projects, nonlocal financiers and beneficiaries, and the desire to keep residential areas esthetically pleasing and properly zoned, fueled opposition to this solar project. This research indicates that environmental advocates and policymakers need to more fully incorporate both the meanings of, and connections to places, residents of a community hold. Incentives intended to increase solar projects should not be at the expense of procedural justice, and the push should not feed solar into the centralized system, but should be in the hands of local communities in order for them to be embraced. Additionally, this case further highlights the complexity of NIMBY thinking in renewable projects. Dismissing all renewable opposition as NIMBY is failing to see the complicated nature of residents’ motivations and understandings of place. Future research exploring the success of decentralized projects, community based projects, and projects incorporated within industrial zoning is necessary.