Why Do Populists Hate Renewable Energy? Because It Works, That’s Why.

Populists have a very delicate ecosystem: grievance, nostalgia, and a terminal allergy to complexity. Renewable energy crashes through all three like a wind turbine through a talk radio studio.

Let’s be honest - they’re not anti-renewables because they’ve done a deep dive into grid intermittency or read a white paper on energy storage. They’re anti-renewables because solar panels don’t wave a flag or smoke reassuringly like a 1970s coal plant. It’s all electric cars, efficiency, science - things that don’t scream God, country, and whatever Nigel Farage is selling this week.

Populism depends on enemies. Foreigners. Bureaucrats. Scientists. Now add “solar panels” to the hit list, because apparently anything that doesn’t belch fumes or make a profit for BP is a left-wing conspiracy. A wind farm goes up and suddenly it’s a globalist plot to steal your Sunday roast.

And of course, the nostalgia. These people want to drag us back to a time when you could pour petrol on your lawn, call it weed control, and no one would bat an eye. The golden era of "proper energy" - the kind that made the sky brown and the economy dependent on dictatorships. Solar panels? Too clean. Too modern. Too foreign-sounding. Where’s the soot? Where’s the patriotism?

They bang on about energy security, yet reject the very technology that gets us off foreign gas. They moan about high bills, but attack the infrastructure that brings prices down. It’s not about logic. It never was. It’s about performance - and the script says “green bad, oil good,” no matter what the data says.

And let’s not pretend this isn’t bankrolled. Fossil fuel interests have been whispering sweet nothings into populist ears for years. The irony? While the rest of us are trying to stop the planet cooking, these clowns are dancing for oil money like it’s Britain’s Got Treason.

So yes, they hate renewables. Because renewables threaten the story they’ve built their entire identity on - that progress is dangerous, experts are liars, and the past was perfect. Reality, as usual, is the thing they fear most.