Battery Panic Can’t Be Compared to Aberfan Disaster
The latest NIMBY misperceptions are overwrought — and wrong.
A 10-megawatt Battery Energy Storage System in the Netherlands.
Source: S4 Energy B.V.Grumbling about energy infrastructure feels like a distinctly modern problem linked to the energy transition. But it’s an old story. In 1929, economist John Maynard Keynes and writer Rudyard Kipling co-signed a letter to The Times blasting pylons as “the permanent disfigurement of a familiar feature of the English landscape.”
In recent years, objections to the likes of wind turbines and solar panels have included both real and imaginary impacts on wildlife, health, and food security. Many of these concerns are either unfounded or can easily be mitigated — livestock grazing can be done on the same land as solar panels, for example, and there are many ways to reduce harm to birds and bats.