The Fight

Sign In or Create an Account.

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

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.

This article is exclusively
for Heatmap Plus subscribers.

Go deeper inside the politics, projects, and personalities
shaping the energy transition.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Spotlight

How a Tiny Community Blocked Battery Storage in Over Half of Los Angeles County

Much of California’s biggest county is now off limits to energy storage.

Wildfire and battery storage.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Library of Congress

Residents of a tiny unincorporated community outside of Los Angeles have trounced a giant battery project in court — and in the process seem to have blocked energy storage projects in more than half of L.A. County, the biggest county in California.

A band of frustrated homeowners and businesses have for years aggressively fought a Hecate battery storage project proposed in Acton, California, a rural unincorporated community of about 7,000 residents, miles east of the L.A. metro area. As I wrote in my first feature for The Fight over a year ago, this effort was largely motivated by concerns about Acton as a high wildfire risk area. Residents worried that in the event of a large fire, a major battery installation would make an already difficult emergency response situation more dangerous. Acton leaders expressly opposed the project in deliberations before L.A. County planning officials, arguing that BESS facilities in general were not allowed under the existing zoning code in unincorporated areas.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

A Hawk Headache for Washington’s Biggest Wind Farm

And more of the week’s top news about renewable energy conflicts.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Benton County, Washington – A state permitting board has overridden Governor Bob Ferguson to limit the size of what would’ve been Washington’s largest wind project over concerns about hawks.

  • In a unanimous decision targeting Horse Heaven Wind Farm, the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council determined that no turbines could be built within two miles of any potential nests for ferruginous hawks, a bird species considered endangered by the state. It’s unclear how many turbines at Horse Heaven will be impacted but reports indicate at least roughly 40 turbines – approximately 20% of a project with a 72,000-acre development area.
  • Concerns about bird deaths and nest disruptions have been a primary point of contention against Horse Heaven specifically, cited by the local Yakama Nation as well as raised by homeowners concerned about viewsheds. As we told you last year, these project opponents as well as Benton County are contesting the project’s previous state approval in court. In July, that battle escalated to the Washington Supreme Court, where a decision is pending on whether to let the challenge proceed to trial.

2. Adams County, Colorado – This is a new one: Solar project opponents here are making calls to residents impersonating the developer to collect payments.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Q&A

Trump Cuts Solar Industry’s Experiments to Win Hearts and Minds

A conversation with David Gahl of SI2

The Fight Q&A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

This week I spoke with David Gahl, executive director of the Solar and Storage Industries Institute, or SI2, which is the Solar Energy Industries Association’s independent industry research arm. Usually I’d chat with Gahl about the many different studies and social science efforts they undertake to try and better understand siting conflicts in the U.S.. But SI2 reached out first this time, hoping to talk about how all of that work could be undermined by the Trump administration’s grant funding cuts tied to the government shutdown. (The Energy Department did not immediately get back to me with a request for comment for this story, citing the shutdown.)

The following conversation was edited lightly for clarity.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow