Fairness or failure
Unsplash photo by American Public Power Association
When two wind energy projects got quashed near her cousin’s home in New Brunswick, Louise Comeau decided to figure out what was going on.
Canadians overwhelmingly say they support wind, solar and clean energy in principle. Both projects were exactly the kind of thing needed to get off fossil fuels and onto clean electricity. The wind farm proposals seemed to have everything sorted. They were deemed the cheapest option and the engineers, bankers, regulators, everyone was ready to go — everyone except the local communities.
What Louise found is that the failures had little to do with climate change or the merits of clean electrification. The projects foundered over fairness.