As wind turbines get more efficient and solar panels more affordable, wind and solar plants have grown rapidly.
Efforts to block them have grown rapidly, too, especially since 2021.
USA TODAY’s analysis found 15% of counties nationwide now have some impediment to new utility-scale wind and solar energy.
Gauging those impediments required researching a variety of local rules including outright bans, zoning restrictions, specialized land-use rules or political stonewalls. It also required setting a standard as to which restrictions are restrictive enough to count.
Here’s what we found, and how we measured it:
Bans
In some cases, counties simply ban large renewable energy projects, as part of a backlash to their growing presence. Any county with a ban was counted in our data.
An example is in Pulaski County, Indiana. A wind farm was under consideration for Jasper and Pulaski counties in 2018. The developers said the 20 to 30 turbines in the county would have produced $600,000 per year in tax revenue.