As renewable energy becomes more widespread in the United States, large and bipartisan majorities of Americans say they wouldn’t mind fields of solar panels and wind turbines being built in their communities, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
How did they define “near” and “in their community”?
There’s a decent sized wind farm a few miles outside the town I live in and no one minds at all. If you tried to build that same wind farm right on the edge of town, or even inside it, I suspect the reaction would have been very different. A wind / solar farm 5 miles away is really NBD but one that’s literally on the other side of your back fence may hit different.
Given how quiet solar farms are and how more appealing a windmill is vs smokestacks I’d say that even basically in your backyard isn’t bad.
But I’d also like to know how they defined it here, or if they left it as asking people about it and leaving it up to each individual to use their idea of “near.”