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A data center and a backyard.
Spotlight

Data Centers Collide with Local Restrictions on Renewables

A review of Heatmap Pro data reveals a troubling new trend in data center development.

Hotspots

Feds Preparing Rule Likely Restricting Offshore Wind, Court Filing Says

And more on the week’s most important fights around renewable energy projects.

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Q&A

What Rural Republicans Say About Renewables

A conversation with Courtney Brady of Evergreen Action.

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Spotlight

Data Centers Are the New NIMBY Battleground

Packed hearings. Facebook organizing. Complaints about prime farmland and a disappearing way of life. Sound familiar?

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The United States.

Arkansas Attorney General Reassures Wind Energy Opponents

And more of the week’s most important news around renewable energy conflicts.

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Wil Gehl.

Solar Out West Is ‘Relatively Difficult’ Under Trump

A conversation with Wil Gehl at the Solar Energy Industries Association

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Hotspots

Indiana Energy Secretary: We’ve Got to ‘Do Something’ About the NIMBYs

And more on the week’s most important battles around renewable energy.

The United States.
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

1. Indianapolis, Indiana – The Sooner state’s top energy official suggested energy developers should sue towns and county regulators over anti-renewable moratoria and restrictive ordinances, according to audio posted online by local politics blog Indy Politics.

  • Per the audio, Indiana Energy Secretary Suzie Jaworowski told a closed-door audience Tuesday that she believes the state has to “do something” about the recent wave of local bans on renewable energy because it is “creating a reputation where industry doesn’t want to come.” Among the luncheon’s sponsors were AES Indiana, Duke Energy, and the industry group Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy, and it was officially chaired by Citizens Energy, Indiana Electric Cooperatives, and EDP Renewables.
  • Jaworowski – who was previously an official in the first Trump administration – bemoaned the fact companies spend copious amounts of money on community engagement only to reach no deal. “Personally I think that those companies should start suing the communities and get serious about it,” she said, adding that her office is developing a map of “yes counties” for energy development.
  • At least eleven Indiana counties have outright moratoria on renewable energy development and more than twenty others have at least some form of restriction on solar or wind, according to the Heatmap Pro database.

2. Laramie County, Wyoming – It’s getting harder to win a permit for a wind project in Wyoming, despite it being home to some of the largest such projects in the country.

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Q&A

A Former New England Energy Official Grapples With Losing Offshore Wind

A conversation with Barbara Kates-Garnick, former undersecretary of energy for the state of Massachusetts

Barbara Kates-Garnick.
<p>Heatmap Illustration</p>

This week’s conversation is with Barbara Kates-Garnick, a professor of practice at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, who before academia served as undersecretary of energy for the state of Massachusetts. I reached out to Kates-Garnick after I reported on the circumstances surrounding a major solar project cancellation in the Western Massachusetts town of Shutesbury, which I believe was indicative of the weakening hand developers have in conflicts with activists on the ground. I sought to best understand how folks enmeshed in the state’s decarbonization goals felt about what was happening to local renewables development in light of the de facto repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean electricity tax credit.

Of course, like anyone in Massachusetts, Kates-Garnick was blunt about the situation: it’s quite bad.

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