Comparing Renewable Energy in California and Texas
A student traveled to four sites between California and Texas to study how state political environments inform the successes or failures of proposed wind farms.
This summer, with the assistance of a Kleinman Center grant, I completed ethnographic fieldwork in Redding and Lompoc, California, and Abilene and Wichita Falls, Texas, comparing the approaches of a liberal and conservative state policy environment to environmental infrastructure implementation. Lompoc and Abilene were chosen as examples of successful wind farms, compared to failure cases of proposed wind farms that were not built in Redding or Wichita Falls. These sites were chosen because they faced resistance and approval at the same level of government in their respective states.
In completing this work, I learned the importance of studying political dynamics at the county level, which in California is where most permitting occurs. Part of Shasta County’s resistance to the Redding project amounts to unified county opposition. One interviewee said the wind farm opposition united three unlikely allies: a MAGA coalition against state climate goals, Native tribes against building on historically significant sites, and conservationists. Meanwhile, while there was conservative resistance to the Lompoc wind farm, the district was outvoted by more liberal Santa Barbara County. One Santa Barbara interviewee told me they felt no tension between California state climate goals and county residents’ opinions, and this alliance pushed the building of the wind farm through despite Lompoc resistance.
Comparing permitting structures, Texas research suggests that “local” approval may not give local residents more input into projects. Texas has no formal permitting process for energy projects; approval is managed as a private property transaction. Opposition organizes at the county-level and in local school districts, which vote on whether new projects receive tax abatements within their boundaries. The primacy of property ownership in Texas allows non-local actors significant control. Despite not hosting these projects, Abilene and Wichita Falls would benefit. Abilene residents knew people who had moved or traveled to town because of the wind farms, whereas Callahan County residents did not.
Abilene and Wichita Falls residents noted the influence of Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) residents, who own weekend properties nearby. Residents have differing opinions on how DFW landowners influence developments, but all agreed that out-of-town landowners have significant control over the projects’ future. In Wichita Falls, local opponents were only able to block the project by lobbying for a state-level ban on wind development near military bases due to a lack of county control.
Another finding is that project failures were often characterized by a lack of focus on local benefits. Redding and Lompoc residents expressed a desire for increased environmental cleanup, jobs, infrastructure improvement, wildfire prevention, and energy grid security: all potential benefits of environmental infrastructure like wind farms. However, when discussing the potential impacts of the projects, interviewees said these desires were not a focus for the developers. Rather, they described the projects as responding to state, national, or global climate goals. When community benefits agreements were utilized, residents described benefits auxiliary to the projects themselves, like local scholarships. While communities may benefit financially from these projects, developers have not delivered a compelling narrative for how environmentally sound infrastructure can address local environmental problems.
This finding is heightened in Texas, where the lack of a permitting process limits county governments’ ability to negotiate any local benefits. Renewable energy jobs mostly benefit nearby cities like Abilene and Wichita Falls rather than rural communities, and the financial benefits are primarily felt by individual landowners leasing their property who may not live in the area.
Where local communities are disempowered, developers may be able to squeeze projects through without considering local benefits, but this is a short-sighted approach to a decades-long transition to renewable energy. In order to galvanize sustained decarbonization, project developers must get better at framing local benefits.
Charlotte Scott
PhD Student, SociologyCharlotte Scott is a second year PhD student in Sociology. She studies community reactions to environmental infrastructure implementation. She is a Perry World House Fellow and pursuing an Urban Studies certificate.
