We still haven’t got our head round the scale of change renewables mean
It’s more important than ever to understand the magnitude of the changes we are going to have to embrace if we are to carry out the most ambitious technological change ever: abandoning fossil fuels and moving to renewable energy.
Such a change is still considered impossible by many people: a form of what sociologists call isomorphism. After many generations of accepting that a coal-fired power plant spewing smoke into the atmosphere or a nuclear power plant stuffed with extremely hazardous materials is a normal part of the landscape, the idea of seeing that same landscape full of solar and wind farms is challenging, to the point of inspiring protests and legislation demanding, as in Germany, that wind turbines be located at least ten times their height away from any inhabited area, which has caused serious problems. It is curious that in the country where a conservative government once made the strongest commitment to renewables of all the world’s major economies, progress is slowed by protests from local communities who do not want to live near something as innocuous in comparison to a coal or nuclear power plant as a wind turbine or a solar farm. In the UK, the development of onshore wind farms could now be stopped by no less than its prime minister, Boris Johnson…
