The Vineyard Wind Lawsuit 2.0

1. Nantucket County, Massachusetts – Welcome to the Vineyard Wind lawsuit 2.0.

• Fishermen represented by a conservative legal group – the Texas Public Policy Foundation – filed a petition to the Supreme Court this week asserting that the justices can now reconsider approvals for the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project because of the high court’s decision to overturn the Chevron doctrine, a now-defunct judicial precedent that courts defer to agencies on statutory interpretation.
  
• It’s not entirely clear whether overturning Chevron will produce a different outcome than the Court’s decision to ignore the last petition from fisherman about Vineyard Wind’s permits. But the argument is definitely different, as the new petition argues a lower court wrongly deferred to agency interpretation of federal laws used to approve the project.
  
• The Texas Public Policy Foundation did not respond to requests to discuss this case.

2. Carroll County, Maryland – Carroll County commissioners are intervening in the state permitting fight over two relatively small solar projects, in what has become a wider proxy battle between the county and the state over solar on farmland.

• This week commissioners filed to intervene against two solar projects that will produce fewer than 5 megawatts of energy each. The county has formally sought to ban solar on farmland and opposes all such projects within its boundaries – but the state Public Service Commission has the final say on these projects.

3. Barren County, Kentucky – Somehow this large-scale 100-megawatt solar farm proposed by Geenex is having an easier time in Kentucky than in Maryland. Why?

• One reason is that, according to an analysis by Heatmap Pro, our software platform that assesses community sentiments around renewable energy, Carroll County is much wealthier and denser than Barren County, both big signals for opposition. (Carroll County’s opposition score, our predictor of NIMBYism, is almost 30 points higher than Barren’s.) And, despite being in a red state, Barren residents are more supportive of renewable energy even in the abstract than blue-state Carroll.
  
• Another reason, according to media reports, is because there are no real zoning requirements for the project. Opponents typical of the fights we cover here are raising complaints, but the project’s going to go in as long as it meets minimum local environment and safety standards.
• “I can certainly sympathize with maybe some of the angst that’s there. Without having zoning in our county, we cannot dictate any use that takes place,” Myatt told local ABC affiliate WBKO. “So hopefully this spurs some discussion with regards to having countywide zoning because in truth, there is no way to stop any kind of development, or even have a say on it, without having county-wide zoning.”

4. Osage County, Oklahoma – A federal judge paused the removal of the Enel wind farm that was ordered last year to be removed over opposition from Native tribes.

• U.S. Court of International Trade judge Jennifer Choe-Groves stayed implementation of the order pending an appeal of the decision. Choe-Groves was designated to oversee the case before the federal district court in northern Oklahoma.
  
• You can read the ruling here, but here’s the important line: Choe-Groves ruled that if the stay was not granted, Enel “would be required to complete the costly and potentially irreversible process of deconstructing the wind farm before the appellate court has an opportunity to consider the case.”

5. Albany County, Wyoming – It seems the conservative anti-renewables advocates working against offshore wind are quietly involved in fighting Repsol’s Rail Tie wind project in Wyoming.

• As I previously reported, eagle conservation advocates in Wyoming have asked the Trump administration to halt permitting for Rail Tie and other wind projects in the state.
• In a blog post Monday, David Wojick of CFACT – one of the main groups we’ve reported is involved in efforts to lobby Trump to kill more wind projects – endorsed the cause of the activists fighting Repsol’s Rail Tie wind project.
  
• Wojick also called for the federal government to expend more resources on tracking eagle deaths from wind farms and suggested the government should force wind projects to shut down if they kill a certain number of eagles.He said another member of CFACT, Maggie Immen, is involved in fighting the project. This shouldn’t be a surprise given her proclivity for eagle costumes

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