The Fight

Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Spotlight

How Bad Information Is Breaking the Energy Transition

Why an attorney for Dominion Voting Systems is now defending renewables companies.

A doctor and solar panels.

My biggest takeaway of this year? Bad information is breaking the energy transition – and the fake news is only getting more powerful.

Across the country, we’re seeing solar, wind, and battery storage projects grind to a halt thanks to activism powered by fears of health and safety risks, many of which are unfounded, unproven, exaggerated, or conspiratorial in nature. There are some prominent examples, like worries about offshore wind and whales, but I’ve spent a large chunk of The Fight’s lifespan so far investigating a few crucial case studies, from wildfire fears confronting battery developers in California to cancer concerns curtailing a crucial transmission line in New Jersey. To tell you the honest truth, it is difficult to quantify just how troubling this issue is for the industry.

Keep reading...Show less
Hotspots

The Top Five Renewable Energy Fights of the Year

A look at 2024’s most notorious conflicts in the energy transition.

A map of America.

Alright, friends. It’s time for a special edition of The Fight’s Hotspots, where we walk you through what we believe were the five most important project conflicts of the year. We decided this list based on the notoriety of the fight within the renewables sector as well as whether our reporting found it to be significant for the entire industry. And we included the opposition scores for these projects based on our internal Heatmap Pro data to help you better understand whether these fights were flukes or quite predictable.

We hope this helps you all in this, errhmm, trying time for developers right now.

Keep reading...Show less
Q&A

Trump and the Keystonization of Renewable Energy

A conversation with Devin Hartman of R Street

Devin Hartman.

Today’s special Q&A is with an old source of mine, Devin Hartman, energy and environment policy director for the conservative D.C. think tank R Street.

When I used to cover Congress, Devin was one of the few climate-minded conservatives willing to offer a candid, principled take on what could happen in that always deliberative body. I decided for our year-end edition to ask him a lot of questions, including an important one: will Trump make it easier or more difficult to permit solar and wind projects?

Keep reading...Show less
Q&A

An America First Strategy for Renewable Energy?

A conversation with Tim Brightbill of Wiley Rein LLP

Tim Brightbill of Wiley Rein LLP.

Today we’re talking with Tim Brightbill, a trade attorney at Wiley Rein LLP and lead counsel for a coalition of U.S. solar cell and module manufacturers – the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee. Last week, his client won a massive victory – fresh tariffs on south Asian solar panel parts – on the premise that Chinese firms are dumping cheap products in the region to drive down prices and hurt American companies. It’s the latest in a long series of decadal trade actions against solar parts with Chinese origin.

We wanted to talk to Tim about how this move could affect developers, if an America-first strategy could help insulate solar from political opposition, and how this could play out in next year’s talks over the future of the IRA. The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.

Keep reading...Show less