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Hotspots

A Fine Week For Solar, Bad For Everyone Else

And more of the week's news in renewable energy fights.

Map of contested renewable energy projects.
Heatmap Illustration

1. Magic Valley, Idaho – It’s never a dull day for the Lava Ridge wind project.

  • Trump’s executive order also put a moratorium on the wind project site and essentially invalidated its environmental review under Biden. As we’ve explained, the project got permits in the final days of the previous administration.
  • But opponents to the project – most notably Senator Jim Risch – got the president to turn this into a Keystone XL-style situation. Idaho Governor Brad Little yesterday issued an executive order instructing state regulators to comply with anything Trump’s folks do to stop the project, an executive order of his own he jokingly dubbed the “Gone With The Lava Ridge Wind Act.”
  • Lava Ridge has been crickets since Trump’s order and its developer Magic Valley Energy has not issued a public statement. The most recent statement available on their website is still about its permits being approved under Biden.
  • I’ve tried to get in touch with them via the most recently-listed media contact for the project all week over phone and email – most recently this afternoon – but have had no luck. (Amy, please call me back.)

2. Multiple counties, Ohio – Regulators in Ohio issued final decisions for two contested solar projects, clearing the way for one while all but stopping another.

  • Savion’s Clear Mountain Energy Center solar-plus-battery project in Clermont County, Ohio, was approved by the Ohio Power Siting Board last week.
  • But Samsung’s Richmond Solar project in Union County was rejected by the OPSB, citing local opposition to say it did not serve “public interest, convenience, and necessity.” The project would also include battery storage if constructed.
  • OPSB also denied a petition for a rehearing for NextEra’s Circleville Solar project in Pickaway County, which had previously had its approval denied by the regulator.

3. Pender County, North Carolina – A solar project that was rejected late last year by the North Carolina Court of Appeals will be reconsidered by the same court, after the Democrat vote that decided the case was replaced by a Republican.

  • At the end of last year, the appeals court ruled Coastal Pine Solar had failed to demonstrate a solar project it proposed in Pender County sufficiently complied with a local restrictive ordinance. The ruling was not split, but it seems the new composition of the court means there’ll be a second go at the case.

4. Lancaster County, Nebraska – in We have good news for solar in Nebraska, where county commissioners have approved a massive NextEra solar project.

  • Commissioners cleared the Panama Energy Center solar project despite considerable local activism opposing its development. They said the decision to approve it was only possible after at least some concessions to the concerns in the community, including a vegetation management plan.

5. Montgomery County, Alabama – Another solar project – Silicon Ranch – also got approval this past week from the local Board of Adjustments, meaning a Meta data center is now poised to receive renewable energy.

  • Activism against the project is quite pronounced, as we’ve been covering closely in The Fight. I’m anticipating a little more noise in the coming weeks about how to stop this project in spite of the local approval.

Here’s what else we’re watching ...

In Kansas, landowners are suing to stop a NextEra solar project in Jackson County.

In Oklahoma, a Woodside-backed hydrogen project has been paused citing the Trump administration’s changes in policy.

In Nevada, the Bureau of Land Management cleared the way for the Rough Hat solar project days before Joe Biden left office.

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Spotlight

Anti-Wind Activists Have a Big Ask for the Big Man

The Trump administration is now being lobbied to nix offshore wind projects already under construction.

Trump and offshore wind.
Getty Images / Heatmap Illustration

Anti-wind activists have joined with well-connected figures in conservative legal and energy circles to privately lobby the Trump administration to undo permitting decisions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to documents obtained by Heatmap.

Representatives of conservative think tanks and legal nonprofits — including the Caesar Rodney Institute, the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT — sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dated February 11 requesting that the Trump administration “immediately revoke” letters from NOAA to 11 offshore wind projects authorizing “incidental takes,” a term of regulatory art referencing accidental and permissible harassment, injury, or potential deaths under federal endangered species and mammal protection laws. The letter lays out a number of perceived issues with how those approvals have historically been issued for offshore wind companies and claims the government has improperly analyzed the cumulative effects of adding offshore wind to the ocean’s existing industrialization. NOAA oversees marine species protection.

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Hotspots

The Great Battery PR Fire of 2025

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

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.

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Policy Watch

Building Renewable Energy on Castles of Sand

A look at the biggest news around renewable energy policy this week.

Wind turbines
Getty Images / Heatmap Illustration

1. The anti-renewable locavore – Republican lawmakers are aiming to empower localities to block renewables projects, a similar scene to what’s played out in Ohio, where state legislators gave towns the power to have a final word on development instead of state-led entities.

2. Sgamma thoughts – Trump selected Kathleen Sgamma, head of the pro-oil Western Energy Alliance, to head the Bureau of Land Management. What does this mean for renewables developers? It’s hard to tell because so much of her time was spent on a single mission: liberating as much oil from the ground as possible.

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