A couple of weeks ago I was privileged to be invited to a community event up in Armidale to discuss the Renewable Energy Zone in New England. I learned a lot, and I think I helped some others learn some other things. It strikes me that this REZ (and others?) came from an utterly naive mindset that just didn't grasp that downsides to wind, solar, and transmission even exist. Let alone a proper conception of what scaling up many GW worth of it in a 'zone' like New England would be like. I get the sense that some paper pushers in a city genuinely thought that the guys in the country would be as excited about renewables as they were. Armidale sits in the middle of this stunning tableland, covered with incredibly rich farmland, which falls away into these deep canyons down to rivers in national parks. It's moderately well-populated. Historically, it was over-cleared. Most of the best remnant trees that provide the right habitat for mammals, and contiguous stretches of it, are on hilltops and ridgelines. And unsurprisingly, it's the hilltops and ridgelines that are prime for wind-farms, which require cleaning enormous roads all along the ridgetops to construct. Those and the edges of the table, which fall away into the deep canyons that create updrafts for massive birds of prey. Maybe Australia has more land than many other countries. But it's not as though we haven't found good things to do with it. Including keeping bits wild. Maybe there are bits of Australia where there's genuinely low impact for massive amounts of wind and solar. But if New England is anything to go by, we haven't found them yet. I'd recommend the video. My section starts around 1:05:00. And there is also an excellent panoscope mapping out the geography of the REZ and proposed projects around 40:00. youtu.be/ZCNelOkaGKo?si=y_KR…