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Hotspots

Empire Wind in the Crosshairs

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

Renewable energy conflicts across the country.
Heatmap Illustration

1. Bristol County, Massachusetts – The state of Massachusetts is abandoning plans to build an offshore wind research center in New Bedford, a fishing town that has also hosted protests against Vineyard Wind.

  • According to media reports, a local attorney gathered more than 260 signatures against the project’s proposed location in New Bedford and municipal elected leaders spoke out against it.
  • This led the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, a state entity planning the facility, to fold its plans and vote to reallocate all of the money to an “initiative” instead that will use existing buildings in the area. It’s unclear as of now what that will look like.

2. Long Island, New York – Speaking of offshore wind woes, the anti-wind activist movement is now circling Empire Wind and asking President Donald Trump to rescind the EPA air permit to the Equinor offshore project.

  • Two prominent anti-offshore wind organizations – Save the East Coast and Protect our Coast-Long Island – announced yesterday in a press release posted to Facebook that they were petitioning the EPA to take the permit away, just like it did earlier this month with the Atlantic Shores project off the coast of New Jersey.
  • Activists have also asked EPA to get rid of air permits for New England Wind and Vineyard Wind, by the way. We’ll be watching their documents closely.

3. Fayette County, Pennsylvania – This sought-after county for solar development appears to be on the precipice of enacting a sweeping 500-foot property setback requirement.

  • The ordinance would apply to all towns in the county that do not already have a zoning ordinance for solar energy, which is the vast majority. Bear Peak Power, a developer operating in the county, is reportedly opposing the ordinance over a shortened permitting timeline.

4. Tippecanoe County, Indiana – Solar developer Geenex is beginning what’ll likely be a tense battle to win special zoning approval for a large utility-scale solar project in an area that already is subject to a restrictive setback ordinance.

5. Jefferson County, Wisconsin – We’re about to get a glimpse of whether Wisconsin can be as difficult a battleground for large-scale solar in rural areas as Ohio.

  • The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin recently found a state environmental impact statement for Ranger Power’s 180-megawatt Whitewater Solar project in Jefferson and Walworth County was “not required.” If the commission does not reconsider its decision, state permits are all but guaranteed.
  • This has sent opponents of the project into a tizzy. “Friends please help,” reads a new page on the website for Stop Whitewater Solar, a local organization led by disgruntled residents nearby the project area. The group is seeking comments to request an EIS.
  • I’m not convinced Stop Whitewater Solar will achieve what its name states though. A Change.org petition against the project created by someone involved in the group has received less than two dozen signatures.

6. Routt County, Colorado – We have our first-ever entry of Hotspots from Colorado, thanks to a zoning snafu.

  • Trapper Solar, an RWE subsidiary, has seen its proposal to build the largest solar project in the county stalled after Routt officials passed a new zoning code apparently days after the developer’s application was filed. The zoning code isn’t renewables-specific, but included a litany of new environmental mitigation requirements for development generally.
  • This wasn't entirely unexpected. Despite Routt’s overwhelmingly Democratic politics, Heatmap Pro gives it an above-average risk profile, thanks to its affluence, wealth of protected lands, and a workforce centered around skiing and tourism.

7. Fannin County, Texas – County commissioners here are now forming a joint planning committee with the city of Savoy, where we told you residents fearful after the Moss Landing battery fire are trying to stop an Engie storage facility from being built.

  • The decision was prompted by the battery storage fight. It’s unclear if the committee’s formation can lead to new impediments to development here, because Texas municipalities have far less control over development than towns and cities in other states.

8. Fresno County, California – The Moss Landing fire isn’t stopping Gov. Gavin Newsom from expediting new battery storage project permits.

  • Newsom last week issued a legal certification protecting against judicial challenges for a 300-megawatt storage facility in the city of Fresno proposed by Cornucopia Hybrid.
  • The certification specifically means any court challenge will need to be decided within 270 days “to the extent feasible,” according to the governor’s office. This makes me wonder – are they predicting legal action?

9. Alaska – How do you kill a battery project if no one’s around to protest? Take away its money… and that’s why my mind is on the Kodiak State.

  • Today, the climate news outlet Heated reported a secret “hit list” inside of the Trump administration calls to rescind $50 million promised to Westinghouse for a pumped thermal energy storage project intended to help the small community of Healy rely entirely on wind energy generation. It’s one of the emptiest regions of the country.

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Spotlight

Data Centers Collide with Local Restrictions on Renewables

A review of Heatmap Pro data reveals a troubling new trend in data center development.

A data center and a backyard.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Data centers are being built in places that restrict renewable energy. There are significant implications for our future energy grid – but it’s unclear if this behavior will lead to tech companies eschewing renewables or finding novel ways to still meet their clean energy commitments.

In the previous edition of The Fight, I began chronicling the data center boom and a nascent backlash to it by talking about Google and what would’ve been its second data center in southern Indianapolis, if the city had not rejected it last Monday. As I learned about Google’s practices in Indiana, I focused on the company’s first project – a $2 billion facility in Fort Wayne, because it is being built in a county where officials have instituted a cumbersome restrictive ordinance on large-scale solar energy. The county commission recently voted to make the ordinance more restrictive, unanimously agreeing to institute a 1,000-foot setback to take effect in early November, pending final approval from the county’s planning commission.

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Hotspots

Feds Preparing Rule Likely Restricting Offshore Wind, Court Filing Says

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

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Ocean County, New Jersey – A Trump administration official said in a legal filing that the government is preparing to conduct a rulemaking that could restrict future offshore wind development and codify a view that could tie the hands of future presidential administrations.

  • In a court filing last Friday, Matthew Giacona – Trump’s principal deputy director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management – laid out the federal government’s thoughts about re-doing the entire review process that went into approving the Atlantic Shores project. The filing was related to the agency’s effort to stay a lawsuit brought by anti-wind advocates that officials say is unnecessary because, well … Atlantic Shores is already kind of dead.
  • But the Giacona declaration went beyond this specific project. He laid out how in the Trump administration’s view, the Biden administration improperly weighed the impacts of the offshore wind industry when considering the government’s responsibilities for governing use of the Outer Continental Shelf, which is the range of oceanfront off the coastline that qualifies as U.S. waters. Giacona cited an Interior Department legal memo issued earlier this year that revoked Biden officials’ understanding of those legal responsibilities and, instead, put forward an interpretation of the agency’s role that results in a higher bar for approving offshore wind projects.
  • Per Giacona, not only will BOEM be reviewing past approvals under this new legal opinion, but it will also try and take some sort of action changing its responsibilities under federal regulation for approving projects in the Outer Continental Shelf. Enshrining this sort of legal interpretation into BOEM’s regulations would in theory have lasting implications for the agency even after the Trump 2.0 comes to a close.
  • “BOEM is currently beginning preparations for a rulemaking that will amend that provision of the regulations, consistent with M-37086 [the legal opinion],” Giacona stated. He did not elaborate on the timetable for this regulatory effort in the filing.

2. Prince William County, Virginia – The large liberal city of Manassas rejected a battery project over fire fears, indicating that post-Moss Landing, anxieties continue to pervade in communities across the country.

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Q&A

What Rural Republicans Say About Renewables

A conversation with Courtney Brady of Evergreen Action.

Courtney Brady.
Heatmap Illustration

This week I chatted with Courtney Brady, Midwest region deputy director for climate advocacy group Evergreen Action. Brady recently helped put together a report on rural support for renewables development, for which Evergreen Action partnered with the Private Property Rights Institute, a right-leaning advocacy group. Together, these two organizations conducted a series of interviews with self-identifying conservatives in Pennsylvania and Michigan focused on how and why GOP-leaning communities may be hesitant, reluctant, or outright hostile to solar or wind power.

What they found, Brady told me, was that politics mattered a lot less than an individual’s information diet. The conversation was incredibly informative, so I felt like it was worth sharing with all of you.

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