More Wind & Solar Projects Spiked. US Rejections/Restrictions Hit 791, Global Total Now At 91

 For over 15 years, I’ve tracked the backlash against solar and wind energy projects. Lately, the rejections and restrictions have been piling up so quickly that it has been difficult to keep track of them all.

Over the past month, wind projects in Shasta County, California, and Knox County, Nebraska, have been dealt deadly blows. In Carroll County, Arkansas, local officials enacted a moratorium on the development of solar and wind projects. In Michigan, state officials vetoed a solar project backed by the German firm RWE after a widespread backlash. That “green” energy project was going to require clear-cutting 420 acres of forest land near the town of Gaylord.

The global opposition to wind and solar energy also continues to grow. In early February, I introduced the Global Renewable Rejection Database. At that time, the global database had 72 rejections. Today, that figure is 91. And those numbers don’t represent the full extent of the rural anger toward Big Wind, Big Solar, and Big Batteries. On March 16, Nick Rabbitts of the Limerick Leader published an article about the first anniversary of “regular protests in Adare over plans for a wind farm in Coolcappa.” Rabbitts explained:

The Coolcappa Community Action Group are concerned about the proposals from Ballynisky Wind Energy to construct six turbines with an overall height of 158 meters [518 feet] near the village. Since March 2024, members of the group in the west Limerick village have staged regular demonstrations in Adare village on the main N21 road. Not only is this because the developer’s offices are in the village, they also want to capture the attention of the thousands of passing motorists each day.

Here's a brief update on the worldwide opposition to renewable energy projects, with links to the rejection databases and four updated charts.

 

 

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As seen above, there have been 477 wind energy rejections or restrictions in the US since 2015. All of them are verified in the Renewable Rejection Database.

Let’s start with Knox County, where the British utility, National Grid, has been pushing the $1.3 billion North Fork Wind project for several years. The county seat in Knox County is the town of Center, which has a population of 73 people.

On March 14, Knox County won a battle in federal court when US District Court Judge John M. Gerrard sided with the county and dismissed most of National Grid’s lawsuit against the county. The company sued as part of an effort to force the county to accept the wind project. In his decision, Gerrard wrote that there’s “no mechanism under Nebraska or federal law that prevents Knox County from banning commercial wind farms, so long as there is a conceivably or hypothetically rational reason to do so.”

According to David Begley, an Omaha-based lawyer representing the county, the company has spent nearly $20 million on the wind project. But if National Grid had been able to build the project, Begley estimated it could have collected hundreds of millions of dollars in federal tax credits.

Begley sent me a note a few days ago titled “David Beats Goliath. Again.” In it, he noted that National Grid sold its renewables business to Brookfield Asset Management, a Canadian company, for $1.7 billion last month. Brookfield says it has some 69 gigawatts of alt-energy projects in development in the US.

Last week, in a unanimous vote, officials in Carroll County, Arkansas, adopted a moratorium on new alt-energy projects. As one local media noted, the move came “just a few months after nearby Madison County put a similar hold on renewable energy projects into effect.”

 

This week, Shasta County won a huge victory when a staff report by the California Energy Commission decided the controversial Fountain Wind project would take too heavy a toll on the environment. The report said wind generation might help the state reduce emissions but concluded: “The evidence is clear that this location is not compatible with this proposed facility.” County officials, who have been fighting the wind project for years, celebrated the report, saying the decision is “a major milestone in the county’s ongoing efforts to protect public safety, preserve forest and tribal lands, and uphold local planning authority."

 

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Now let’s zoom out and look at the global picture.

In early March, a plan for what the BBC calls a “colossal” solar project in Staffordshire was rejected by local authorities. Here’s the key part of the report, which said the project was met with:

More than 300 objections. The proposed 141-acre site...aimed to generate enough power for more than 11,000 homes. But opponents of the scheme argued the development was "ridiculous" and "ill-thought out" and would transform the rural countryside into an industrial area. Councillors at Staffordshire Moorlands District Council were united against the proposal and refused the plans at a recent meeting. Local resident Peter Slinn said the site, equivalent to the size of 140 football pitches, would "have a massive detrimental effect" on his family and would dominate their "lovely views of the countryside." (Emphasis added.)

In mid-March, a massive wind project in New Zealand was rejected because regulators were “not satisfied adverse effects on significant indigenous vegetation and the significant habitats of indigenous fauna on Jedburgh Plateau can be offset or compensated.” The project was rejected despite New Zealand’s commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. It’s worth noting that Climate Action Tracker deems the country’s efforts to be “highly insufficient.”

 

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There are many more rejections than I have space for here. Further, there’s simply no doubt that more and more communities around the world are refusing to let Big Solar and Big Wind invade their neighborhoods. As seen above, the number of entries in the Global Renewable Rejection Database is soaring. In 2023, there were 16 restrictions of solar and wind. In 2024, there were 51. Today, less than three months into 2025, there have already been 24 rejections or restrictions. Notably, about half of those rejections have occurred in the UK.

The punchline here is obvious: despite myriad claims from elite academics and their many allies in the media, there is no way that solar and wind energy can provide the staggering amount of energy and power the world demands at prices that consumers can afford. Yes, the intermittency of solar and wind is a problem. And no, we don’t have enough batteries to store that intermittent energy to ensure 24/7/365 reliability.

But the fundamental problem, is now — and always will be — land.

Solar and wind projects require too much land. In 2012, Dieter Helm, a professor of energy policy at Oxford University, said, “Even if we devoted all our resources to current wind and solar technologies, they would not be anything like enough to solve the problem of climate change. There simply is not enough land.”

Helm was right then. He’s right now. And the latest rejections of solar and wind projects in the US and around the world add more proof.

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