> If states fail to meet the targets by certain deadlines, the government will wave regulations on the minimum distance between residential areas and wind farms.
That sounds like a way to make lots of people hate wind farms.
That sounds like a way to make lots of people hate wind farms.
It's not a threat, it's a statement of preferred outcomes with a "we truly prefer not to do this" fallback in case the preferred solution is not achieved on their own terms.
It will only escalate if they don't meet goals and it is telegraphed in advance.
- if resistance is too high on projects that meet the minimum distance rules then you instead get projects even closer to home
- if minimum distance rules are set too restrictive they get waved entirely, so you are better off setting reasonable rules in the first place
Theoretically the federal government can define the regulation around the necessary distance of wind farms to where people live. However, the federal government gave that power to the states – which lead to some states creating very restrictive distance regulations, effectively making it impossible to build many wind farms and making it impossible to meet their targets that are needed for the energy transformation.
This is the federal government giving the states fair warning that those targets are non-negotiable and that it’s the federal government who has the power to make overriding distance regulations. But, obviously, the preference is still for the states to figure this out on their own, depending on their own unique circumstances.
If the federal government were to step in it‘s not as though the would build wind farms in people‘s backyards just to spite the states. They would then just define distance rules that would allow them to meet the wind farm targets. That‘s all.