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Hotspots

Solar Notches Some Local Wins While Battery Storage Hears Boos

And more of the week’s top news in renewable energy conflicts.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Hampden County, Massachusetts – Disgruntled residents in the small city of Westfield have won their fight against a Jupiter Power battery storage project.

2. Staten Island, New York – Speaking of people booing battery storage, the battle over BESS on Staten Island is potentially turning into major litigation.

  • Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella – who eagle-eyed Fight readers will remember I’ve previously interviewed about BESS – disclosed last week that his office will file a lawsuit to try and block new projects in the borough.
  • The potential lawsuit arrives as state legislators representing Staten Island this week claim to have successfully stopped regulatory approvals for a Hecate battery storage proposal in the borough.

3. Montgomery County, Maryland – County planners have approved a small solar farm on agricultural lands in the small D.C. exurb of Rockville surprising even the project’s developer Chaberton Energy.

  • As a Rockville native, however, this doesn’t surprise me. My home town has a very strong liberal bent but has recently undergone a rapid expansion in housing and urban development, indicating a low risk for NIMBYs gumming up the works.
  • This is echoed in Heatmap Pro data, which shows Rockville has a high renewable energy support score and a low risk for opposition.

4. Mecklenburg County, Virginia – A 90-acre RWE solar project has been rejected for the second time by county officials despite the developer slimming down the project size in response to local complaints.

  • This RWE effort, dubbed the Antlers Road solar farm, has been in the works for years. But it hasn’t been approved yet due to a county ordinance that put a cap on the acreage allowed for solar projects – which RWE has sued to try and kill, arguing it is arbitrary and capricious.

5. Licking County, Ohio – The Ohio Supreme Court is allowing Open Road Renewables’ utility-scale Harvey Solar project to proceed over objections from angry neighbors.

  • In an opinion issued this week, justices ruled unanimously that the Ohio Public Siting Board complied with the law when it approved Harvey Solar, finding the points raised by residents who appealed the decision “lack merit.”

6. Adams County, Illinois – It’s not all sunshine and roses in the Midwest though, as even a relatively tiny solar farm is struggling to get approval in rural Illinois.

  • Residents of the small town of Ursa appear to be up in arms over a 4-acre project proposed by Greenkey Solar, citing fears about property values, visual impacts, and potential implications for wildlife.

7. Pierce County, Wisconsin – An AES utility-scale solar farm is getting significant pushback from surrounding residents over farmland impacts.

8. Dickinson County, Iowa – Invenergy has removed some turbines from its Red Rock Wind Energy Center in a bid to try and overcome a vocal contingent of opposition in the county.

  • I’m bearish on this strategy working, as Heatmap Pro data indicates a 97% opposition score – meaning the folks who hate wind may be systemic and not just go away with a slimmed-down project design.

9. Cedar County, Iowa – Elsewhere in the Hawkeye State, an Iowa farmer is suing Nordex claiming that a wind turbine fire damaged his wheat crop.

  • I have been seeing this article make the rounds on anti-renewables Facebook and it would not surprise me if the concept of wind turbine fires and farmland impacts become a point raised by opponents in the weeks and months to come.

10. Lincoln County, Oklahoma – A battery storage facility proposed by Black Mountain is the subject of an investigative news article about opposition to BESS in Oklahoma.

  • The article claims the opposition is recruiting allies from the broader anti-renewables grassroots in Oklahoma, including the activists we profiled earlier this year fighting to ban new renewables projects in the state.

11. Santa Barbara County, California – The backlash to the Moss Landing battery fire has now led the central coast city of Santa Maria to ban new battery storage facilities.

  • Per a local news account, the ordinance effectively banning BESS was drafted after the fire and ahead of any potential proposals coming to the city limits.
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Q&A

How the Wind Industry Can Fight Back

A conversation with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications

The Q&A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”

Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.

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Hotspots

A New York Town Bans Both Renewable Energy And Data Centers

And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.

  • Chautauqua, a vacation town in southern New York, has now reportedly issued a one-year moratorium on wind projects – though it’s not entirely obvious whether a wind project is in active development within its boundaries, and town officials have confessed none are being planned as of now.
  • Apparently, per local press, this temporary ban is tied to a broader effort to update the town’s overall land use plan to “manage renewable energy and other emerging high-impact uses” – and will lead to an ordinance that restricts data centers as well as solar and wind projects.
  • I anticipate this strategy where towns update land use plans to target data centers and renewables at the same time will be a lasting trend.

2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.

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Spotlight

The Wind Projects Breaking the Wyoming GOP

It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.

At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.

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