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Hotspots

A Battery Ban, Burning Man, and Lots More Yelling

The week’s biggest fights around renewable energy

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1. San Diego County, California – The battery backlash just got stronger after the city of Escondido, California, indefinitely banned permits to the entire sector in reaction to a battery fire last month.

  • Last week, the city council enacted a 45-day moratorium on permits to construction and operation of battery energy storage systems, or BESS. The moratorium will impact AES Corporation’s Seguro storage project, as well as at least one more pending project, according to staff testimony at the city council meeting on the matter.
  • But for AES and anyone else who hopes this ends quickly, some bad news: Staff also testified it’ll take much longer than 45 days to prepare a report outlining next steps due to the outstanding government workload – and that’ll just be the idea generation phase of the city’s response. A 10-month moratorium was discussed as a potential next step.
  • “I don’t think any of us up here are adamantly opposed to battery energy storage systems,” the city’s Republican mayor Dane White said at the meeting. “However, it has to be done the right way.”

2. Waldo County, Maine – The potential first floating offshore wind assembly site in America is now one step further in the permitting process, after Maine’s Department of Transportation released a pre-application alternatives analysis required for federal environmental reviews.

  • The Maine DOT report defends the selection of Sears Island for the project. We previously scooped that this decision has serious legal risks.
  • Nevertheless, the state believes that it’s a better site than Mack Point, an existing energy logistics port nearby. According to the report, the Mack Point alternative would cost more and “limit any future plans for growth.”
  • “[It] presents problematic design features that greatly reduce its operational functionality and effectively preclude its use,” the report stated.
  • This effectively begins the state and federal environmental permitting process for the Sears Island port project. On its end, the state is also preparing a broader draft environmental review.

3. Dickinson County, Kansas – This one county may be a bellwether for future problems in Kansas, a state with many existing wind farms — and even more potential — but also a lot of opposition.

  • Activists stormed a community meeting late last week on deciding whether to move forward with Enel Green Power’s 334-megawatts Hope Ridge wind farm. If county planners reject the project, it’ll potentially come with a two-year moratorium on wind. Enel has several operating wind farms in Kansas, including Diamond Vista, which is in the adjacent Marion County. (Marion’s got its own moratorium now, too).
  • Despite existing generation, Dickinson County is one of the riskier places in the United States for new renewable energy development, according to Heatmap Pro’s analytics, thanks to its demographic, economic, and geographic similarities to other opposed counties.
  • At the top of the meeting, Enel project developer Jon Beck laid out a laundry list of reasons to build the project including jobs and tax revenue. “This area has been really favorable for a lot of reasons, and that’s why we continue here,” Beck said.
  • But while some in attendance supported the development, lots of testimony opposing the project stretched the hearing beyond the five-hour mark. (Pray for me, I listened back to the tape).
  • There’s a follow-up meeting this week. And Enel clearly takes this development seriously, because they sent me a lengthy statement about the opposition to Hope Ridge.
  • “Throughout this process, we’ve worked to show the Dickinson County community that wind power has been a huge success story for Kansas, bringing billions of dollars in economic impact largely targeted to rural areas,” the statement read. “Our landowners and community partners at Diamond Vista, just down the road, have seen how our project has provided new jobs, better roads, and more local funding over the last six years.”
  • It continued: “We understand many people in Dickinson County have concerns, but we also have a lot of supporters in the county — including our landowners — who are counting on us to make the case for this project. We hope to earn the support of the Planning Commission this week."

4. Washoe County, Nevada – The company behind the Burning Man festival will be acquiring nearby geothermal energy leases, in a settlement resolving litigation that had the high-profile naturalist escape challenging access to a renewable energy resource.

  • Burning Man will purchase the leases from power company Ormat, which will then in turn help the festival organizations turn that land into a conservation area, according to an announcement of the settlement.
  • This may effectively kill Ormat’s geothermal exploration project in the area after local officials also revoked a crucial drilling permit.

Here’s what else we’re watching right now…

In North Carolina, the Kerr Lake Solar project proposed by Cypress Creek Renewables is facing its own apparent local onslaught at community meetings.

In California, Capstone and Eurowind Energy are seeking permission to build a long-duration battery storage facility in Alameda County.

In New Jersey, a coalition of shore towns and opposition groups fighting the EDF-Shell Atlantic Shores offshore wind farm have issued a new missive criticizing state financial benefits to the project.

In New York, the town of Oyster Bay looks like it’ll be extending its moratorium on BESS for at least another six months.

In Pennsylvania, a Pivot Energy solar farm also has some local organizing in the way.

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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.

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