The Fight

Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Hotspots

The Renewable Energy Project Trump Might Kill on Day 1

And more news on the biggest conflicts around renewable energy projects.

Map.
Heatmap Illustration

1. Magic Valley, Idaho – Sen. Jim Risch, one of the state’s loudest opponents of the Lava Ridge wind farm, said he believes Donald Trump will stop the project on Day 1.

  • In a newly-aired interview with TV outlet KTVB, Risch said the matter has been presented to the incoming president and that the proposal from LS Energy would be targeted by an order similar to Biden’s stopping the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
  • “When Biden took office, he walked in there [and] signed an executive order and that was the end of the Keystone pipeline. When Donald Trump walks into that president’s room, waiting for him is going to be a keystone pipeline-like executive order that says Lava Ridge ain’t no more.”
  • Lava Ridge has faced fierce backlash for a long time, for cultural and environmental reasons. That’s why we at Heatmap put it at the very top of our list of 10 at-risk projects to watch in the energy transition.
  • The Bureau of Land Management released a federal environmental review for Lava Ridge in June and it sliced the project’s scope in half, from 400 turbines to a little north of 200. The next and final step would be a record of decision formally approving it but it’s unclear when – or if – the record of decision for the wind project may be released before Trump leaves office.
  • Keep an eye out for more reporting on this potential move.

2. Hardin County, Kentucky – Lightsource, a subsidiary of bp, is going to the mat against a chapter of prominent anti-renewables network Citizens for Responsible Solar over a project in the small Kentucky city of Elizabethtown.

  • Lightsource is vying to build the 128-megawatt Telesto solar farm in Hardin despite a planning commission that is hostile to solar. Their apparent solution? Build it entirely on private land owned by individuals requesting annexations from their city government.
  • Telesto’s backers have tried a charm offensive that’s included local media interviews and selected local donations.
  • But right now I’m skeptical of the project’s odds in the short term for two reasons: city administrative staff have recommended against the annexation and Citizens for Responsible Solar is mobilizing its members.
  • “URGENT PLEA! We need to fill the room,” Hardin County Citizens for Responsible Solar posted to Facebook this week.
  • A decision on annexation by the city council is expected as soon as next week.

3. Allegany County, New York – I’m keeping close tabs on a new solar-farmland fight in upstate New York between a plant nursery and a 3.7 megawatt SolAmerica solar farm.

  • The small town of Amity has approved the project. And until now, Allegany County has been receiving new solar farms with little backlash.
  • But its location offers a sympathetic picture. It’s close to a small business – and overlapping with prime farmland. So it is drawing attention from columnists and its county legislator, Gretchen Hanchett, who weighed in yesterday asking local politicians to “balance the interests of property owners on both sides.”
  • This is the kind of political momentum that has led to new county-level restrictions in the past, so now Allegany’s on ordinance watch. Hanchett told a farmer in a county legislature meeting in August that they “have the support of this legislature in trying to find solutions” to solar and farmland conflicts.
  • “There’s a lot to learn in protecting our food supply and our small farmers,” Hanchett said, per meeting minutes from the gathering.

Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on…

In Indiana, a Cobia Solar project that would use 7,000 acres seems to face an uphill battle to local permits.

In Maryland, the county of Dorchester is enacting new restrictions on solar development after facing initial opposition from the Solar Energy Industries Association and RWE Clean Energy.

In Virginia, planners in South Boston have recommended rejecting a 10 megawatt solar and storage project proposed by Cenergy Power.

In Missouri, an Evergy solar farm proposed at a Kansas City airport is taking much longer than initially anticipated per press reports.

In New Jersey, anti-wind activists are adopting a new strategy to kill the Atlantic Shores offshore wind farm: forcing the state bureaucracy into a new cost-benefit analysis.

In Oregon, anti-offshore wind activists are celebrating Donald Trump’s win at the ballot box.

This article is exclusively
for Heatmap Plus subscribers.

Go deeper inside the politics, projects, and personalities
shaping the energy transition.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Spotlight

Data Centers Collide with Local Restrictions on Renewables

A review of Heatmap Pro data reveals a troubling new trend in data center development.

A data center and a backyard.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Data centers are being built in places that restrict renewable energy. There are significant implications for our future energy grid – but it’s unclear if this behavior will lead to tech companies eschewing renewables or finding novel ways to still meet their clean energy commitments.

In the previous edition of The Fight, I began chronicling the data center boom and a nascent backlash to it by talking about Google and what would’ve been its second data center in southern Indianapolis, if the city had not rejected it last Monday. As I learned about Google’s practices in Indiana, I focused on the company’s first project – a $2 billion facility in Fort Wayne, because it is being built in a county where officials have instituted a cumbersome restrictive ordinance on large-scale solar energy. The county commission recently voted to make the ordinance more restrictive, unanimously agreeing to institute a 1,000-foot setback to take effect in early November, pending final approval from the county’s planning commission.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

Feds Preparing Rule Likely Restricting Offshore Wind, Court Filing Says

And more on the week’s most important fights around renewable energy projects.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Ocean County, New Jersey – A Trump administration official said in a legal filing that the government is preparing to conduct a rulemaking that could restrict future offshore wind development and codify a view that could tie the hands of future presidential administrations.

  • In a court filing last Friday, Matthew Giacona – Trump’s principal deputy director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management – laid out the federal government’s thoughts about re-doing the entire review process that went into approving the Atlantic Shores project. The filing was related to the agency’s effort to stay a lawsuit brought by anti-wind advocates that officials say is unnecessary because, well … Atlantic Shores is already kind of dead.
  • But the Giacona declaration went beyond this specific project. He laid out how in the Trump administration’s view, the Biden administration improperly weighed the impacts of the offshore wind industry when considering the government’s responsibilities for governing use of the Outer Continental Shelf, which is the range of oceanfront off the coastline that qualifies as U.S. waters. Giacona cited an Interior Department legal memo issued earlier this year that revoked Biden officials’ understanding of those legal responsibilities and, instead, put forward an interpretation of the agency’s role that results in a higher bar for approving offshore wind projects.
  • Per Giacona, not only will BOEM be reviewing past approvals under this new legal opinion, but it will also try and take some sort of action changing its responsibilities under federal regulation for approving projects in the Outer Continental Shelf. Enshrining this sort of legal interpretation into BOEM’s regulations would in theory have lasting implications for the agency even after the Trump 2.0 comes to a close.
  • “BOEM is currently beginning preparations for a rulemaking that will amend that provision of the regulations, consistent with M-37086 [the legal opinion],” Giacona stated. He did not elaborate on the timetable for this regulatory effort in the filing.

2. Prince William County, Virginia – The large liberal city of Manassas rejected a battery project over fire fears, indicating that post-Moss Landing, anxieties continue to pervade in communities across the country.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Q&A

What Rural Republicans Say About Renewables

A conversation with Courtney Brady of Evergreen Action.

Courtney Brady.
Heatmap Illustration

This week I chatted with Courtney Brady, Midwest region deputy director for climate advocacy group Evergreen Action. Brady recently helped put together a report on rural support for renewables development, for which Evergreen Action partnered with the Private Property Rights Institute, a right-leaning advocacy group. Together, these two organizations conducted a series of interviews with self-identifying conservatives in Pennsylvania and Michigan focused on how and why GOP-leaning communities may be hesitant, reluctant, or outright hostile to solar or wind power.

What they found, Brady told me, was that politics mattered a lot less than an individual’s information diet. The conversation was incredibly informative, so I felt like it was worth sharing with all of you.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow