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Hotspots

Agri-Voltaics Anguish, Offshore Wind Wailing

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

Map.
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1. Douglas County, Kansas – A legal headache is consuming Kansas Sky Energy Center, a 159-megawatt solar project proposed by Savion and Evergy … and showcasing how “agri-voltaics” may not be the community engagement panacea some in industry are praying for, according to legal filings reviewed by Heatmap.

  • The Douglas Board of County Commissioners approved the project earlier this year unanimously in spite of a petition from nearly property owners to oppose the project. After that, landowners and the small neighboring community of Grant Township sued the county commissioners to invalidate the approval.
  • The litigation accuses the Board Chair Karen Willey of essentially orchestrating the approval and the solar project’s agri-voltaics plans without meaningful local consultation, per the most recent amended complaint filed by the aggrieved community members.
  • The complaint gets ugly real fast, citing texts and emails to allege some sort of conspiracy between Willey, Savion employees, and The Nature Conservancy, the environmental nonprofit, which was brought in to assist with the agri-voltaics plans.
  • “Commissioner Karen Willey, a well-known opponent of production farming and a critic of the accepted farming principles that enable Kansas farmers to feed the world,” states the complaint filed in August, “orchestrated the request and approval process to fulfill her pre-set personal agenda.”
  • Willey and the rest of the board have denied all of the wrongdoing alleged in the suit and are fighting it vigorously.
  • Irrespective of the merits, this one’s a headache, and must be eating up lots of time and money for developers and the local government. Yesterday a federal judge sent the case to state court after a prolonged fight over jurisdiction.
  • This can be a fraught place to develop solar, as NextEra Energy has experienced with its West Gardner solar project.

2. Worcester County, Maryland – We finally get to see the contours of the legal strategy against the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, after Ocean City and surrounding local business and government officials filed their lawsuit last week.

  • In their complaint, opponents primarily cite environmental protection laws and issues like “segmenting” environmental impacts that are “cumulative” under NEPA (i.e. looking at them separately instead of together).
  • The lawsuit also argues the government failed to properly consider the impacts of climate change on the wind project.
  • Ocean City and its allies are represented in the case by locally-based attorney Bruce Bight of the D.C. law firm Marzulla, which is also representing fishermen fighting offshore wind in New England.

3. Barnstable County, Massachusetts – Another blow to offshore wind came Friday in the coastal town of Barnstable where leaders voted to oppose cable landings for Avangrid’s New England Wind 2 project.

  • The town’s non-binding resolution opposing the cable landings came after a citizens group waged a pressure campaign – including litigation – to make the town ditch a host community agreement with Avangrid.
  • Avangrid did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

4. Somewhere near Houston, Texas – The small city of Katy rejected a 500-megawatt battery storage project proposed by Ochoa Energy despite the community struggling with regular blackouts.

  • During the city council’s meeting last week on the project, city councilors discussed crafting their own anti-storage moratorium and cited other communities with new restrictions, including specifically Escondido, California.
  • The rejection was at least partially based on fear. Katy City Councilor Gina Hicks said she personally supported construction but local opposition made it impossible for her to support the project as an elected representative.
  • The vote against Ochoa’s proposal came after an uproar at another recent public meeting on the project, per Hicks, who predicted “brownouts” and “blackouts” without the project.
  • “Just know that we as a community chose this and I will represent what the community wants versus what I feel is personally best for this decision,” she said.

Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on…

In Iowa, a county fighting the Worthwhile Wind farm proposed by Invenergy is asking outside legal counsel for help after a federal judge ruled the project could resume construction.

In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington city Linda Gorton testified against construction of a 40-megawatt solar farm proposed by the East Kentucky Power Cooperative.

In Massachusetts, a private non-profit that operates historic sites in Nantucket has withdrawn from the Vineyard Wind good neighbor agreement.

In Michigan, the tiny town of Groveland Township is trying to get a restrictive battery storage ordinance in place before a new state law curbing local control comes into effect. (Sorry you’re dealing with this one, Vesper Energy.)

In Virginia, Dominion Energy has sold a non-controlling 50% stake in Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind as public comments resume on the proposed project (which haven’t always been favorable).


Editor's note: A previous version of this article misidentified one of the companies behind the Kansas Sky Energy Center. It has been corrected. We regret the error.

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Spotlight

It’s Getting Harder to Build a Solar Farm In America’s Sunniest State

A renewables fight in Arizona turns ugly.

Arizona solar farm.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Autumn Johnson told me some days it feels like she’s shouting into a void.

Johnson is the executive director for the Arizona branch of the Solar Energy Industries Association, the nation’s pre-eminent solar power trade group. Lately, she told me, she’s seeing an increasing number of communities go after potential solar farms, many of them places with little or no previous solar development. There’s so many she’s had to start “tracking them on a spreadsheet,” she tells me, then proceeding to rattle off the names of counties and towns like battles in a war. Heatmap Pro data reveals how restricted Arizona is today, with six out of the state’s 15 counties showing a restrictive ordinance on solar and/or wind energy.

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Hotspots

Congressman Asks Trump to Shut Down the Empire Wind Project

And more of the week’s top renewable energy fights.

Map of renewable energy fights.
Heatmap Illustration

1. Long Island, New York We begin today with a crucial stand-off for the future of energy off the coast of New York City: Rep. Chris Smith – one of the loudest anti-wind voices in Congress – is asking the Trump administration to shut down active work on the Empire Wind project.

  • Few in Congress have frustrated offshore wind developers more than Smith, a New Jersey Republican who used legislative maneuvers to get a Government Accountability Office study greenlit about the impacts of offshore wind on whale species.
  • In a letter Friday, which has not been previously reported, Smith requested the project be forcibly paused until the Trump administration can complete its purported government-wide review of the wind industry.
  • Smith also asked a host of additional mitigation requirements be placed on Empire Wind before it can proceed, including new specific requirements on impacts to air travel. The letter claims – without specifics – that the project could impact radar interference “in the shadow of three major airports.”
  • “Empire Wind cannot safely proceed until much needed further review [can] be done to protect the public and our eastern seaboard. I ask that you do everything in your power to halt Equinor’s underhanded rush to begin piledriving and block construction until the critical assessment can be completed,” Smith wrote.
  • I’ve asked Equinor to comment on this letter, as a stop-work order would be a massive escalation in the war on offshore wind. Alyse Sharpe, a public affairs specialist with the Interior Department, told me in an email the agency does "not comment on congressional correspondence" but said it "takes all correspondence from Congress seriously and reviews each matter" and should there be "any updates on this topic, we will provide further information at the appropriate time."

2. Gulf of Maine – American floating offshore wind is now taking one more step backwards, as Mitsubishi pulls out of the test arrays it was working on under Biden with researchers at the University of Maine.

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Q&A

How Should Regulators Grapple With Moss Landing?

A conversation with Dustin Mulvaney, professor of environmental studies at San Jose State University

Dustin Mulvaney
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Today’s conversation is with Dustin Mulvaney, an environmental studies professor at San Jose State University. Mulvaney is a social scientist who spent much of his time before January 2025 advocating for more considerate and humane renewable energy development. Then Moss Landing happened. Mulvaney – who was there at Moss Landing the first day – is now obsessed with the myriad safety concerns laden in large-scale utility battery storage and what plans were in place to deal with the fire. His reasoning? A failure to grapple with safety concerns could undermine public trust in battery storage and make a transition away from fossil fuels more difficult.

The following is an abridged version of our conversation, which was the interview that first prompted me to investigate the mystery of the health concerns surrounding the fire.

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