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Hotspots

The Great Battery PR Fire of 2025

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

Jael Holzman •
02/13/2025
Renewable energy fights
Heatmap Illustration

1. Monterey County, California – The Moss Landing battery fire is now the big renewables PR crisis we should all be watching, even with Trump 2.0 going on.

  • Whereas before a battery fire news cycle might last a week, this story’s now in thermal runaway, as The New York Times has taken to profiling the sick and injured. Affected residents have now sued Vistra Energy, operator of the Moss Landing battery storage facility, for damages. Famed environmentalist Erin Brockovich is now involved, working in tandem with victims’ attorneys. Nearby San Luis Obispo and Orange counties have now issued temporary moratoriums on new battery storage.
  • It’s worth considering how much of this is unique to Moss Landing. The residents’ legal comaplint takes aim at the use of nickel manganese cobalt batteries (NCM) for storage, as opposed to lithium iron-phosphate (LFP) chemistries. NCM is an historically popular battery chemistry used in consumer electronics and electric vehicles … but not as often with storage.
  • “Because they are safer, most energy storage projects around the world have been transitioning to LFP batteries,” the complaint states. “NMC batteries undergo thermal runaway at a lower temperature and release more energy from decomposition, while LFP batteries can withstand higher temperatures than NCM batteries before beginning the thermal runaway process.”
  • The lawsuit also claims the fire suppression system at Moss Landing was faulty and contrasts its behavior with a fire at a “neighboring Tesla project, which used safer and less volatile LFP batteries,” and which it says was “quickly extinguished.”

2. Portage County, Wisconsin – Doral Renewables’ Vista Sands solar project is facing a prolonged legal fight with the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, a state outdoor recreation and wildlife advocacy group. At the center of the conflict is a bird that’s long bedeviled developers of all stripes: the greater prairie chicken.

  • The state Public Service Commission approved Vista Sands on January 16. On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation said it would appeal the decision “based on the threat” the project could “endanger and possibly extirpate” nearby populations of the greater prairie chicken. The WWF’s press release quotes multiple former Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources officials and claims the group “secured a generous private donor that is willing to match donations 1 to 1 to help with our legal expenses.”

3. Santa Fe County, New Mexico – Energy developer AES got a green light for its Rancho Viejo solar-plus-battery project, prevailing for now over an organized opposition campaign.

  • The opposition focused on fire risks from the battery storage and had successfully pushed a county official directly overseeing the project’s permits to recommend against approvals. But after days of hearings, AES appears to have come out on top, winning a 6 to 1 vote from the Santa Fe County Planning Commission. According to NPR affiliate KSFR, there will be a 30-day window for appeals.

Here’s what else I’m watching…

In New York, a NineDot BESS project is the latest scene of the Staten Island battery backlash, while Yonkers extended its battery moratorium.

In Indiana, one county — Pulaski — has moved forward with plans to ban BESS, even though, according to media reports, no projects are proposed there.

In Ohio, tempers remain hot over Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar project, which will face an Ohio Power Siting Board public comment meeting next month.

In North Carolina, a NextEra utility-scale solar project was approved by county regulators, but …

In Oklahoma, a different NextEra utility-scale solar project was rejected by county regulators.

In Wyoming, one county board of commissioners apparently gave EG Haystack Solar, the developer behind a proposed large-scale solar farm, an absolute grilling over a project it wound up rejecting. Read the full account here.
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Jael Holzman profile image

Jael Holzman

Jael is a senior reporter at Heatmap. Previously, she was an energy and climate policy reporter for Axios and covered energy transition resources for E&E News. She lives in Washington, D.C.

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Spotlight

The Blast Radius of Interior’s Anti-Renewables Order Could Be Huge

Solar and wind projects will take the most heat, but the document leaves open the possibility for damage to spread far and wide.

Jael Holzman •
07/24/2025
Wetlands, Donald Trump, and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It’s still too soon to know just how damaging the Interior Department’s political review process for renewables permits will be. But my reporting shows there’s no scenario where the blast radius doesn’t hit dozens of projects at least — and it could take down countless more.

Last week, Interior released a memo that I was first to report would stymie permits for renewable energy projects on and off of federal lands by grinding to a halt everything from all rights-of-way decisions to wildlife permits and tribal consultations. At minimum, those actions will need to be vetted on a project-by-project basis by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the office of the Interior deputy secretary — a new, still largely undefined process that could tie up final agency actions in red tape and delay.

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Hotspots

Idaho’s Lava Ridge Wind Farm Faces a New Fight in Congress

We’re looking at battles brewing in New York and Ohio, plus there’s a bit of good news in Virginia.

Jael Holzman •
07/24/2025
The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Idaho — The LS Power Lava Ridge wind farm is now facing a fresh assault, this time from Congress — and the Trump team now seems to want a nuclear plant there instead.

  • House Republicans this week advanced an Interior Department appropriations bill that would indefinitely halt federal funding for any permits related to the proposed wind facility “unless and until” the president reviews all of its permits issued under the Biden administration. Biden had completed permitting right before Trump took office.
  • Trump had already ordered a stop to construction on the project as part of a Day 1 flurry of executive orders. But if this policy rider becomes law, it could effectively handcuff any future president after Trump from allowing Lava Ridge to move forward.
  • While Democrats tend to view riders like these unfavorably and attempt to get rid of them, government funding packages require 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster, which often means partisan policies from funding bills passed by previous Congresses are challenging to get rid of and can stick around for long stretches of time.
  • By that same logic, one would assume that the need to hit that 60 number now requires Democrats, so wouldn’t they need them and want to ditch this rider? Except one thing: it is exceedingly likely given past congressional fights that the party’s right flank in the House requests fresh concessions. Policy riders like these become chits in that negotiation – and I do expect this one to be an easy sop for this flank given the executive order is already in place.
  • There’s also the whole matter of whether LS Power will try to proceed with this project under a future president amidst increasing pressure on the company. That’s likely why Sawtooth Energy, an energy developer interested in building new small modular nuclear reactors, is now eyeing the project site.

2. Suffolk County, New York — A massive fish market co-op in the Bronx is now joining the lawsuit to stop Equinor’s offshore Empire Wind project, providing anti-wind activists a powerful new ally in the public square.

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Q&A

How to Fight Back Against Anti-Renewable Activists

Getting local with Matthew Eisenson of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

Jael Holzman •
07/24/2025
The Fight Q&A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

This week’s conversation is with Matthew Eisenson at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Eisenson is a legal expert and pioneer in the field of renewable energy community engagement whose work on litigating in support of solar and wind actually contributed to my interest in diving headlong into this subject after we both were panelists at the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference last year. His team at the Sabin Center recently released a report outlining updates to their national project tracker, which looks at various facility-level conflicts at the local level.

On the eve of that report’s release earlier this month, Eisenson talked to me about what he believes are the best practices that could get more renewable projects over the finish line in municipal permitting fights. Oh — and we talked about Ohio.

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