What this Comment found so compelling in Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help was the human factor—the authors could have written the same article about what is going on in solar, biodigesters, hydro projects, or trash-to-energy projects. There is a good amount of research that could be done as to why this has cropped up recently. The human stories in the article are heartbreaking—this issue is dividing families, and people are being effectively excommunicated from their churches because of what side they are on.

Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help is really important and timely in that it asks some key questions and makes some key points. One of the important observations in the article, and the authors’ rationale for tackling these siting issues, is that if we continue to do things as we have, there will be more renewable energy projects that fail than need to fail. Part of what that means is tackling the conflicts around renewable siting. Addressing conflict is part of the role that law plays—trying to help navigate how we balance competing interests.

Prof. Christiana Ochoa et al.’s Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help is a thought-provoking piece that coincides with significant growth in the wind industry, as well as broad-based expansion of county-level ordinances regulating wind power. It is a useful contribution to the literature and to the conversation around this topic. The Comment additionally notes that it is very difficult to find clear objective and predictive measures of whether property values are going to be impacted—positively or negatively— by wind turbines and wind plants because it can be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that wind energy is not a monolith—we need to exploit the diversity that is possible with wind energy to help solve the challenges.

Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help disproportionately focuses on the negative and the opposition’s talking points with respect to wind energy projects. While it is important to highlight the challenges we are facing, it is also important to highlight the actual data. For example, the article reiterates a lot of the negative impacts around wildlife, sound, health, aesthetics, shadow flickering, and property values. But even though the article mentions that people who are skeptical of wind projects will say they are concerned about health, there are hundreds of studies over 20 years that show that wind turbines do not have significant health impacts. Similarly, with shadow flicker, there are studies that show it does not result in negative health impacts. Recent property value studies indicate there may be an initial dip upon mention of a project and during construction, but they recognize a recovery over time within five to seven years. There is no evidence of long-term property value impacts adjacent to these projects.

This Article offers proposals for better engagements, relationships, and deals with local communities contemplating wind farms. Because the rapid expansion of wind energy to date has exhausted the first-mover rural communities, the promise of wind energy depends on reluctant rural communities that may require the legal, relational, and policy innovations proposed herein if they are to grant their consent to future wind farms and participate in the renewable energy transformation. The proposals are the result of empirical research exploring how occupants of rural spaces have reacted to wind developer’s strategies in their communities and how local communities have employed legal mechanisms to welcome—or, more often, reject— wind farms in their home counties.