The Fight

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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.
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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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Q&A

The Renewable Energy Investor Optimistic About the Future

A conversation with Mary King, a vice president handling venture strategy at Aligned Capital

The Q&A subject.
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Today’s conversation is with Mary King, a vice president handling venture strategy at Aligned Capital, which has invested in developers like Summit Ridge and Brightnight. I reached out to Mary as a part of the broader range of conversations I’ve had with industry professionals since it has become clear Republicans in Congress will be taking a chainsaw to the Inflation Reduction Act. I wanted to ask her about investment philosophies in this trying time and how the landscape for putting capital into renewable energy has shifted. But Mary’s quite open with her view: these technologies aren’t going anywhere.

The following conversation has been lightly edited and abridged for clarity.

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Hotspots

Democratic Climate Hawk Fights Battery Storage Project

And more news around renewable energy conflicts.

The United States.
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1. Nantucket County, Massachusetts – The SouthCoast offshore wind project will be forced to abandon its existing power purchase agreements with Massachusetts and Rhode Island if the Trump administration’s wind permitting freeze continues, according to court filings submitted last week.

  • SouthCoast is a crucial example of a systemic dilemma I reported on months back: Wind projects the Biden administration said it fully permitted will likely still be delayed by a blanket permitting freeze because wind energy requires such large infrastructure that projects need regular green lights from the federal government for new activities.
  • In case you missed it, the anti-wind permitting freeze has been a continued issue for SouthCoast and has led to scrapped negotiations on future power deals with Massachusetts.

2. Tippacanoe County, Indiana – This county has now passed a full solar moratorium but is looking at grandfathering one large utility-scale project: RWE and Geenex’s Rainbow Trout solar farm.

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Spotlight

The Trump Solar Farm Slowdown

Permitting delays and missed deadlines are bedeviling solar developers and activist groups alike. What’s going on?

Donald Trump and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It’s no longer possible to say the Trump administration is moving solar projects along as one of the nation’s largest solar farms is being quietly delayed and even observers fighting the project aren’t sure why.

Months ago, it looked like Trump was going to start greenlighting large-scale solar with an emphasis out West. Agency spokespeople told me Trump’s 60-day pause on permitting solar projects had been lifted and then the Bureau of Land Management formally approved its first utility-scale project under this administration, Leeward Renewable Energy’s Elisabeth solar project in Arizona, and BLM also unveiled other solar projects it “reasonably” expected would be developed in the area surrounding Elisabeth.

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