Survey of 1,705 people who live near wind turbines prefer them to solar and fossil plants - The preference for wind is strong even in US coal-producing states
The results came from a survey of 1,705 people living less than five miles from at least one commercial-scale wind turbine across the United States. The survey, conducted in 2016 by the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, included a hefty set of questions aiming to get a full understanding of how community members feel about their local turbines. It asked questions like how involved people felt in the planning process for the project, how noticeable the turbines are from people's homes, and whether they notice the impact of things like turbine noise.
Because the data from the survey was publicly available, Firestone and Kirk were able to use part of it to delve into the question they were interested in: how did people feel wind power compared to other options? Research on people's acceptance of wind power, they write, usually frames the question as being a choice between wind power or no wind power. But that's unrealistic: society needs to generate electricity somehow, so they argue that the real question should be "whether society should generate electricity by wind or from some other source."
So, they focused on the survey questions that explored people's preference for wind power relative to other options. Those results were stark: around 90 percent of the respondents said they would prefer their local wind farm to a hypothetical nuclear, coal, or natural gas plant at the same distance from their homes. There was even a preference for wind over solar power, although that was less stark—around a third of respondents had no real preference, 15 percent said they would prefer solar power, and 45 percent said they were happier with wind power.
Those results were stable across different demographics. Across urban and rural areas, red and blue states, states that produce coal and those that don't, people overwhelmingly preferred wind power. This held true even for the people who lived closest to the actual turbines, sometimes just around half a mile away from one. And this wasn't just a case of people begrudgingly choosing the option they'd hate the least: on average, people had positive attitudes to their local wind farms.
Quite interesting as I would have expected "noise" or "hum" or similar to be an issue vs silent solar...
See arstechnica.com/science/2019/0…
#windturbines
from Beiträge von Danie van der Merwe https://ift.tt/2UMfZ65
via IFTTT
Because the data from the survey was publicly available, Firestone and Kirk were able to use part of it to delve into the question they were interested in: how did people feel wind power compared to other options? Research on people's acceptance of wind power, they write, usually frames the question as being a choice between wind power or no wind power. But that's unrealistic: society needs to generate electricity somehow, so they argue that the real question should be "whether society should generate electricity by wind or from some other source."
So, they focused on the survey questions that explored people's preference for wind power relative to other options. Those results were stark: around 90 percent of the respondents said they would prefer their local wind farm to a hypothetical nuclear, coal, or natural gas plant at the same distance from their homes. There was even a preference for wind over solar power, although that was less stark—around a third of respondents had no real preference, 15 percent said they would prefer solar power, and 45 percent said they were happier with wind power.
Those results were stable across different demographics. Across urban and rural areas, red and blue states, states that produce coal and those that don't, people overwhelmingly preferred wind power. This held true even for the people who lived closest to the actual turbines, sometimes just around half a mile away from one. And this wasn't just a case of people begrudgingly choosing the option they'd hate the least: on average, people had positive attitudes to their local wind farms.
Quite interesting as I would have expected "noise" or "hum" or similar to be an issue vs silent solar...
See arstechnica.com/science/2019/0…
#windturbines
from Beiträge von Danie van der Merwe https://ift.tt/2UMfZ65
via IFTTT
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