Are Dirty Energy Opponents NIMBY? Proving Industry Wrong

It’s typ­i­cal for ener­gy devel­op­ers fac­ing com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance to pro­posed facil­i­ties to try to dis­cred­it oppo­nents by call­ing them NIMBY (Not in My Back­yard), steer­ing the argu­ment away from health and envi­ron­men­tal impacts to sim­ply one of aes­thet­ics. Cor­po­rate prof­i­teers argue that local oppo­si­tion doesn’t have a prob­lem with a giv­en ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy itself — so long as they don’t have to look at it. 

So, how far are dirty ener­gy oppor­tunists off base when they toss the NIMBY label around in an attempt to sway pub­lic opin­ion and influ­ence gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy in regards to their pol­lu­tion factories?

Indus­try Labels

Pub­lic Strat­e­gy Group’s focus is to give its cor­po­rate clients — includ­ing nuclear, bioen­er­gy and nat­ur­al gas cor­po­ra­tions, along with off­shore invest­ment com­pa­nies and Wal-Mart — “strate­gic advan­tage over their oppo­nents in the pub­lic” and gov­ern­ment by “coun­ter­ing com­mu­ni­ty opposition.”

Com­pa­ny Pres­i­dent Al Maior­i­no claims that “oppo­nents may favor clean ener­gy, how­ev­er they don’t want it locat­ed any­where they can see it.” Industry’s main talk­ing point is that mem­bers of the pub­lic don’t actu­al­ly have a prob­lem with the con­cept of a bio­mass incin­er­a­tor or nat­ur­al gas-fired facil­i­ty, sim­ply its location.

Incin­er­a­tors have such a stig­ma asso­ci­at­ed with them that the Mer­ri­am-Web­ster Dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion of NIMBY actu­al­ly includes a spe­cif­ic men­tion, as “oppo­si­tion to the locat­ing of some­thing con­sid­ered unde­sir­able (as a prison or incin­er­a­tor) in one’s neigh­bor­hood.”  A com­mu­ni­ty is only NIMBY if it fights the sit­ing of a facil­i­ty with­out artic­u­lat­ing a com­plete rejec­tion of that form of energy.

In the case of moun­tain top coal removal, we fre­quent­ly see pub­lic blow­back at the site of extrac­tion in Appalachia, along the thou­sands of miles of trans­porta­tion routes across the coun­try, and at the coal-fired pow­er facil­i­ties them­selves. This far-reach­ing oppo­si­tion, from the source to the burn­ers, has also recent­ly popped up in regards to hydraulic frac­tur­ing or “frack­ing” for nat­ur­al gas. The end result is that the fos­sil fuel indus­try faces con­flict wher­ev­er it turns.

More often than not, with some notable excep­tions, the anti-fos­sil fuels move­ment tends to defy industry’s NIMBY slur by giv­ing a thumbs down to the use of that dirty ener­gy source entire­ly, no mat­ter where it’s located.

Think Local­ly, Act Locally?

While fos­sil fuel oppo­nents typ­i­cal­ly employ a local, region­al, and nation­al strat­e­gy, the major­i­ty of resis­tance to bio­mass ener­gy occurs at the facil­i­ty lev­el only — due, in part, to com­mu­ni­ties sim­ply hav­ing a lim­it­ed amount of time and resources to expend.

How­ev­er, on many occa­sions, com­mu­ni­ties fight­ing a pro­posed bio­mass incin­er­a­tor have made the case that “bio­mass isn’t right” for their town — implic­it­ly (and in some cas­es, explic­it­ly) sug­gest­ing that anoth­er area would be bet­ter suit­ed for the facil­i­ty. In some cas­es, com­mu­ni­ties have suc­cess­ful­ly chased an incin­er­a­tor devel­op­er out of town, only to have them set up shop in a poor­er com­mu­ni­ty a few dozen miles down the road, bring­ing up envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice concerns. 

So, what makes the bio­mass fight dif­fer­ent from, say, oth­er types of dirty ener­gy resistance?

First, unlike con­cen­trat­ed deposits of ura­ni­um or nat­ur­al gas locat­ed only in spe­cif­ic regions around the coun­try, bio­mass fuel — forests, trash, crops, manure or oth­er organ­ic mate­ri­als — is more plen­ti­ful and typ­i­cal­ly found with­in a hun­dred miles or less of a facil­i­ty (except in the case of  wood pel­let exports to Europe and Asia). The rel­a­tive abun­dance of forests and oth­er bio­mass fuels means trans­porta­tion routes aren’t as long and can go by truck over exist­ing road­ways, so they don’t gen­er­ate the sort of oppo­si­tion that comes where new rail lines or pipelines are required. 

Sec­ond, unlike min­ing or drilling for ener­gy-dense coal or oil, the sheer num­ber of trees need­ed to feed a bio­mass incin­er­a­tor requires thou­sands of acres of iso­lat­ed for­est stands spread out over the land­scape. This lack of one or a few large, cen­tral extrac­tion loca­tions makes it tricky to launch on-the-ground mon­i­tor­ing and pub­li­cize envi­ron­men­tal impacts.

Third, bio­mass oppo­si­tion does not enjoy the mas­sive foun­da­tion fund­ing that goes to fight­ing fos­sil fuels, so the move­ment is far more grass­roots — with­out as heavy a pres­ence of Big Greens facil­i­tat­ing oppo­si­tion where it might not form organically.

What­ev­er the rea­sons, when dirty ener­gy oppo­nents focus exclu­sive­ly on stop­ping the con­struc­tion of a facil­i­ty in their town with­out tying into a nation-wide move­ment, they lend cred­i­bil­i­ty to industry’s NIMBY label — dilut­ing the health and envi­ron­men­tal argu­ments against the pol­lut­ing ener­gy source itself.

Weak­ness as Strength

The far-flung nature of forests is both the main rea­son why bio­mass ener­gy oppo­si­tion tends to be so local­ized and is also a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for nation­al solidarity.

More and more, the bio­mass indus­try has been set­ting its sights on pub­lic lands — Nation­al Forests and Bureau of Land Man­age­ment tracts — to feed their incin­er­a­tors. Inflam­ing fears of wild­fire and insects, the bio­mass indus­try has teamed up with Big Tim­ber and vote-hun­gry politi­cians to demand a rapid uptick in log­ging on pub­lic lands owned by all Amer­i­cans. 2003’s Orwellian Healthy For­est Restora­tion Act and more recent­ly Sen­a­tor Ron Wyden’s (D‑OR) Sen­ate Bill S.1784 and Sen­ate Bill S.1301 seek to get out the cut by insist­ing that, counter to sound sci­ence and com­mon sense, the only way to “save” forests is to log them.

Per­haps, once Amer­i­cans real­ize that the mil­lions of acres of oxy­gen-pro­duc­ing, car­bon-seques­ter­ing forests to be chipped and burned for smoke­stack ener­gy are under their con­trol, they will under­stand the impor­tance of snuff­ing out bio­mass incin­er­a­tion nation-wide. One such response to pub­lic lands pro­tec­tion, the Act to Save America’s Forests, has enjoyed bi-par­ti­san sup­port from over 140 mem­bers of Con­gress and been intro­duced into both the Sen­ate and House of the U.S. Con­gress for over a decade.

From NIMBY to NOPE

Fight­ing facil­i­ties at a local lev­el is the foun­da­tion of the dirty ener­gy resis­tance. But, with­out tying into a nation­al frame­work, such as the Anti-Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion Cam­paign, the smoke­stack indus­try will sim­ply keep play­ing its game of musi­cal chairs, sit­ing facil­i­ties in the poor­est towns and/or com­mu­ni­ties of color.

Push­back to a dirty ener­gy facil­i­ty, be it a bio­mass incin­er­a­tor or “clean” coal-fired burn­er, needs to be accom­pa­nied by dis­ap­proval of its sit­ing any­where else, con­dem­na­tion of all forms of its tech­nol­o­gy, and refusal to endorse a dirty ener­gy “alter­na­tive.”

Any­thing less than nation­al anti-dirty ener­gy sol­i­dar­i­ty negates the gen­uine con­cerns of harm­ful health, cli­mate, and ecosys­tem impacts from smoke­stack ener­gy by lend­ing cre­dence to industry’s NIMBY name-call­ing. The day that dirty ener­gy oppo­nents final­ly close their ranks in uni­ty, the pol­lu­tion push­ers will have nowhere left to run.