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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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Q&A

How the Wind Industry Can Fight Back

A conversation with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications

The Q&A subject.
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Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”

Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.

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Hotspots

A New York Town Bans Both Renewable Energy And Data Centers

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

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.

  • Chautauqua, a vacation town in southern New York, has now reportedly issued a one-year moratorium on wind projects – though it’s not entirely obvious whether a wind project is in active development within its boundaries, and town officials have confessed none are being planned as of now.
  • Apparently, per local press, this temporary ban is tied to a broader effort to update the town’s overall land use plan to “manage renewable energy and other emerging high-impact uses” – and will lead to an ordinance that restricts data centers as well as solar and wind projects.
  • I anticipate this strategy where towns update land use plans to target data centers and renewables at the same time will be a lasting trend.

2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.

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Spotlight

The Wind Projects Breaking the Wyoming GOP

It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.

At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.

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