Rural places and small-towns go full-on NIMBY in relation to solar energy installments

NIMBY-ism (Not In My Backyard) is something I've typically associated with cities and suburbs, but recently, the phenomenon is cropping up in rural America, too.  This blog from a few weeks ago, out of rural Georgia, is a good example.  Then yesterday Reuters ran a big feature on the phenomenon with a focus on solar farms and inland southern California.  Here's an excerpt:  

The Solar Star project in California is among the largest solar energy facilities in the world, boasting 1.7 million panels spread over 3,000 acres north of Los Angeles. Its gargantuan scale points to an uncomfortable fact for the industry: a natural gas power plant 100 miles south produces the same amount of energy on just 122 acres.

The dynamic encapsulates the industry’s biggest obstacle to growth: Solar farms require huge amounts of land, and there’s a fast-growing movement, fueled by politicized social-media campaigns, to prevent solar developers from permitting new sites in rural America.

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As solar developers propose new, often sprawling projects in places like Kansas, Maine, Texas, Virginia and elsewhere, local governments and activist groups are seeking to block them and often succeeding. They cite reasons ranging from aesthetics that would harm property values to fears about health and safety, and loss of arable land, farm culture, or wildlife habitat.

“This is increasingly one of the top barriers that we're going to face,” said Steve Kalland, executive director of the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center, a research center that supports clean energy development nationwide. “If we can't get projects sited and deployed, then we're going to have real problems on our hands.”

Recent posts on rural NIMBY-ism in relation to a data center in exurban northern Virginia and an electric truck manufacturing facility in Georgia.