Sometimes environmentalists fight renewable energy. Green arguments against green energy come into play wherever wind-farms spoil mountaintops or shore views and the problems are not simply aesthetics but extend to deforestation, coverage of highly productive agricultural soils or disturbance of wildlife. Cleverly, wind and solar industries have adopted the term
farm to distract from the fact that their renewable energy production is often industrial and its only connection to farms is that farmland gets covered up for energy production.
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Amazon Solar Farm Accomack, Virginia |
Local jurisdictions usually control land use, and often they are at a loss how to classify those wind and solar "farms" since the ag zoning category clearly offers little help. If big enough, power generation sometimes becomes a matter of the state and its utility controlling Public Service Commission.
The Baltimore County Council just
deferred an application for a solar "farm" until it had a chance to study the issue how planting solar panels on the
Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects