Green dilemma: Distributing clean energy can be a painful eyesore

Plus, electric school buses garner high grades, and solar gets a rooftop rival.

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The Waveney Valley is an ‘unspoiled haven with idyllic villages and unique market towns,’ says the Suffolk Coast Ltd Destination Management Organisation. Above, Thorpeness and Aldeburgh.

When I was a second-year student at a university in Norfolk, England, in the, um, 1970s, one of the student housing units I lived in was called Waveney Terrace. Being a building of singular mediocrity, it probably got its name — stolen from a nearby area of great beauty — in a vain bid to obscure that the aforementioned human kennel was an ugly edifice.

Thankfully, I heard that the terrible terrace — scene of many hangovers and worse (a pub was too convenient) — was demolished about 20 years ago, hopefully replaced by something more eye-pleasing and comfortable, a fact that was true of most of the other dorms on campus, which were much-lauded for their design (and which I inhabited in my first and third years).