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Hotspots

Agri-Voltaics Anguish, Offshore Wind Wailing

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

Map.
Heatmap Illustration

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

The National Park Service is Fighting a Solar Farm

A battle ostensibly over endangered shrimp in Kentucky

Mammoth Cave.
Heatmap Illustration/Library of Congress, Getty Images

A national park is fighting a large-scale solar farm over potential impacts to an endangered shrimp – what appears to be the first real instance of a federal entity fighting a solar project under the Trump administration.

At issue is Geenex Solar’s 100-megawatt Wood Duck solar project in Barren County, Kentucky, which would be sited in the watershed of Mammoth Cave National Park. In a letter sent to Kentucky power regulators in April, park superintendent Barclay Trimble claimed the National Park Service is opposing the project because Geenex did not sufficiently answer questions about “irreversible harm” it could potentially pose to an endangered shrimp that lives in “cave streams fed by surface water from this solar project.”

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Hotspots

Ben Carson vs. the Anti-Solar Movement

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

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Dukes County, Massachusetts – The Supreme Court for the second time declined to take up a legal challenge to the Vineyard Wind offshore project, indicating that anti-wind activists' efforts to go directly to the high court have run aground.

  • The more worthwhile case to follow now is the Democratic state-led challenge to Trump’s executive order against offshore wind, which was filed earlier this week.
  • That lawsuit argues, among other things, that the order violated the Administrative Procedures Act and was “contrary to and in excess of” existing environmental and coastal energy leasing laws. One can easily assume the administration and Democratic states may take this case all the way to the high court depending how the federal district court judge rules in the case.

2. Brooklyn/Staten Island, New York – The battery backlash in the NYC boroughs is getting louder – and stranger – by the day.

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Q&A

Meet the Avatar Fan Fighting for Offshore Wind

A conservation with George Povall of All Our Energy

The May 8 interviewee.
Heatmap Illustration

Today’s chat is with George Povall, director of the All Our Energy pro-offshore wind environmental group. Povall – who told me he was inspired to be an environmentalist by the film Avatar – has for more than a decade been a key organizer on the ground in the Long Island area for supporting offshore wind development. But these days he spends a lot more time fighting renewables disinformation, going so far as to travel the community trying to re-educate people about this technology in light of the loud activism against it.

After the news dropped that states are suing to undo the Trump executive order against offshore wind, I wanted to chat with Povell about what environmentalists should do to combat the anti-renewables movement and whether there’s still any path forward for the industry he’s spent nearly a decade working to build as an activist.

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