This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter.

Most of us these days seem to like renewables. Polls tell us that a majority support onshore wind (77% of Scots in a Diffley partnership survey last year), or, last week, that 57% support the move away from oil and gas drilling in favour of investing in clean energy. I am one of them. But that doesn’t mean any old renewables, any place, or that we’re looking for a world of infinite renewables. It doesn’t mean we turn a blind eye to the problems of current clean energy roll out.

In the past few weeks I’ve listened to Dutch historian Rutger Bregman’s inspiring Reith lectures. A few lines from him stood out, because they touched on an issue on my mind. He was quick to condemn NIMBYism and call for deregulation to allow a faster driving forward of clean energy. For him this was the moral approach, the ambitious approach.

It niggled at me. Till last year, I would have backed that statement and been sceptical of those fighting off clean energy projects or infrastructure, thinking that they must be climate deniers, NIMBYs or simply people who hadn’t given much thought to the climate crisis.

But, I’ve found, the NIMBYs do have important points to make, and grievances that must not be too readily dismissed. The way clean energy projects have been pushed through, more via market-driven speculation than long-term planning, risks backlash. Indeed some elements of this roll-out are so messed up that they are almost set to drive objection – and that is not what I want to see.

Chief among these are the chaotic goldrush there has been of battery storage park planning permission applications, and the ongoing........

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