Indiana Rejects One Data Center, Welcomes Another

Shelby County, Indiana – A large data center was rejected late Wednesday southeast of Indianapolis, as the takedown of a major Google campus last year continues to reverberate in the area.

• Real estate firm Prologis was the loser at the end of a five-hour hearing last night before the planning commission in Shelbyville, a city whose municipal council earlier this week approved a nearly 500-acre land annexation for new data center construction. After hearing from countless Shelbyville residents, the planning commission gave the Prologis data center proposal an “unfavorable” recommendation, meaning it wants the city to ultimately reject the project. (Simpsons fans: maybe they could build the data center in Springfield instead.)
  
• This is at least the third data center to be rejected by local officials in four months in Indiana. It comes after Indianapolis’ headline-grabbing decision to turn down a massive Google complex and commissioners in St. Joseph County – in the town of New Carlisle, outside of South Bend – also voted down a data center project.
  
• Not all data centers are failing in Indiana, though. In the northwest border community of Hobart, just outside of Chicago, the mayor and city council unanimously approved an $11 billion Amazon data center complex in spite of a similar uproar against development. Hobart Mayor Josh Huddlestun defended the decision in a Facebook post, declaring the deal with Amazon “the largest publicly known upfront cash payment ever for a private development on private land” in the United States.
  
• “This comes at a critical time,” Huddlestun wrote, pointing to future lost tax revenue due to a state law cutting property taxes. “Those cuts will significantly reduce revenue for cities across Indiana. We prepared early because we did not want to lay off employees or cut the services you depend on.”

Dane County, Wisconsin – Heading northwest, the QTS data center in DeForest we’ve been tracking is broiling into a major conflict, after activists uncovered controversial emails between the village’s president and the company.

• At a village board meeting on Wednesday, a member of activist group No Data Center in DeForest said they obtained conversations between village president Jane Cahill Wolfgram and QTS in which Wolfgram counseled the company on how to sell the project to the community.
  
• Wolfgram apparently told QTS its descriptions of potential water use were inconsistent and that “lots of these folks are college educated and smart and looking to question.” Those comments were subsequently reported early this morning by regional TV news station WKOW, which confirmed the emails were authentic. Now they are beginning to make the rounds on local social media pages.
  
• Wolfgram defended her comments to WKOW in a statement: “It is typical for staff and elected officials to have conversations with individuals or organizations seeking to make local investments to better understand potential impacts, challenges and benefits.”
• Earlier this week, residents apparently also submitted a petition to village leadership requesting a referendum on the data center project that was reportedly signed by more than a thousand residents of the 12,000 person village. The village board rejected the petition, citing advice from its attorneys.

White Pine County, Nevada – The Trump administration is finally moving a little bit of renewable energy infrastructure through the permitting process. Or at least, that’s what it looks like.

• The Bureau of Land Management this week updated the permitting timetable to say it’ll publish an updated analysis for the Greenlink North transmission line next month, taking into account impacts on sage grouse populations. If constructed, Greenlink North is expected to connect to solar projects across northern Nevada and attach to a substation in Ely, a town in White Pine County.
  
• Conservationists consider sage grouse to be a keystone species for climate impacts and require unabated swathes of land in order to find mates. The Center for Biological Diversity has opposed Greenlink North on multiple grounds, but a primary point of contention has been that that new infrastructure could likely hinder sage grouse migration patterns and mating rituals, and the Center celebrated this decision. The solar industry has never really addressed sage grouse impacts in a comprehensive manner as they are somewhat unavoidable, though energy companies do generally monitor for the birds in compliance with any conditions for permits.
  
• I’m not sure where this will go as Trump has certainly sought to hurt renewable infrastructure but also is paring back species protection efforts. It’s also worth noting that the timing here is liable to slip. The Trump 2.0 BLM has updated their permitting timetables for other renewable energy-related projects before, only to miss their deadlines or cancel the project (that’s what happened to Esmeralda 7).

Mineral County, Nevada – Meanwhile, the BLM actually did approve a solar project on federal lands while we were gone: the Libra energy facility in southwest Nevada.

• Developer SB Energy is now expected to begin construction on the 700-megawatt project this year. Libra was nearly finished with the permitting process and had been given a preliminary go-ahead at the end of the Biden administration, but SB Energy apparently required an amendment to its environmental approval taking into account new plans for its gen-tie transmission line, stormwater drainage, and other considerations.
  
• This is not evidence of a broader thaw in renewable energy permitting, as none of the timelines for other active solar projects listed on BLM’s website have been updated since November at the latest.

Hancock County, Ohio – Ohio’s legal system appears friendly for solar development right now, as another utility-scale project’s permits were upheld by the state Supreme Court.

• The high court cleared the way for the South Branch project in Hancock County in late December after residents opposed to the project challenged the final greenlight from the Ohio Power Siting Board, which was issued in 2023. The court found the OPSB decisions were “not unlawful or unreasonable,” that the residents’ challenge to the board was contradicted by evidence, and that the final approvals were justified.
• I expect the next shoe to drop in the state’s solar legal challenges will be the Circleville solar project in Pickaway County. The Supreme Court this week heard arguments in a challenge against the OPSB decision to reject Circleville’s construction permit.