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Hotspots

Battery Fears Hit Nebraska and New York

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

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1. Cass County, Nebraska — Local permits for a 260+ megawatt NextEra solar project have been stalled for at least two months, we can exclusively report.

  • The Cass County Planning Commission held a special meeting Monday on NextEra’s application for the project. Meeting minutes aren’t public yet and a record of the gathering may not be public until at least next week, but staff in the county zoning office confirmed with me on the phone that commissioners tabled the application for 60 days.
  • Why was it tabled? According to one anti-NextEra attendee’s post to Facebook, it was NextEra’s desire to add battery storage to the project. “Voters and commission members jumped all over him about [how] unsafe these lithium ion batteries are and, if they catch on fire, how they are nearly impossible to extinguish,” wrote Dave Begley of Omaha, Nebraska. “The Commission tabled the application over concerns about batteries.”
  • Cass County has restricted solar development before, passing an ordinance in 2023 with property distance requirements. A NextEra project developer told Energy News Network last year 40%-50% of the acreage it has leased for the project would be for setbacks from roads, drainage, and trees.
  • This upper-middle class, white, and conservative community outside of Omaha is also predicted to be a relatively difficult place to build a renewable energy project, based on Heatmap Pro’s modeling of polling, demographic, and economic data. Strong opposition to battery storage, in particular, was likely:

    Batteries.Battery opinion modeling in Cass County, Nebraska.Heatmap Pro Screenshot

  • NextEra did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

2. Westchester County, N.Y. — Speaking of battery blues, a New York state senate race has become imbued with the politics surrounding energy storage, demonstrating how politicians are trying to take advantage of fire fears.

  • Gina Arena, a Republican running for a state senate seat in the Hudson Valley, on Monday published an open letter calling for East Point Energy to abandon its plans for a large lithium battery plant in the district.
  • “If the lithium battery farm were to be built, it would constitute an extraordinary danger to thousands of nearby residents who would have to shelter in place for days in the event of a fire,” she wrote.
  • This is part of a growing trend I’m observing in local and state politicians leveraging adverse reactions to renewables projects for their own gain. Such is the case for the California battery project we covered in our first edition of The Fight, and the Oak Run agri-voltaic project we featured last week.
  • Whether these campaigns succeed depends on many factors including political party and region. But these gambits can be influential.
  • Case in point: The example of Nick Newport, a local pizza shop owner who E&E News reported this week recently won a GOP primary for a Georgia county board of commissioners seat in part on opposition to water access for a Hyundai EV plant.

3. Georgetown County, S.C. — Sunrise Renewables is reportedly delaying a request for zoning approval to build two solar farms in the county amidst blossoming local opposition to development.

  • The solar farms were supposed to receive a public hearing in the Georgetown County planning commission last week but it was postponed after the county commission got “scores of letters and emails” against development, according to the Coastal Observer, a local paper in South Carolina.
  • The investment firm behind Sunrise Renewables is Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, which also owns 50% of the Vineyard offshore wind project.

4. Carroll County, Maryland — Carroll County Commissioners are poised today to oppose a solar farm in the town of Sykesville before the state Public Service Commission on the grounds it conflicts with a county ban on farmland development.

  • “The board maintains its position of protecting owner property rights, local control, land use and permitting authority and the importance of renewable energy while preserving the county’s rich agricultural farmland,” the commissioners said in a press release ahead of the PSC meeting.

5. Stark County, Ohio — The Ohio Power Siting Board last week held two days of testimony-laden hearings in its case over Stark Solar, a 150-megawatt solar farm with battery storage being developed by a subsidiary of Samsung.

Here’s what else I’m watching…

      • In Iowa, Adams County is preparing to update its ordinance against wind projects.
      • In Maine, the town of Trenton has extended a solar moratorium for 180 days.
      • In New York, the town of Somerset has extended its moratorium on battery storage and the town of Duanesburg is extending its anti-battery and wind ordinance.
      • In Virginia, Halifax County is apparently slow in processing solar project applications despite lifting its moratorium.

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      Hotspots

      Judge, Siding With Trump, Saves Solar From NEPA

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

      The United States.
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      1. Jackson County, Kansas – A judge has rejected a Hail Mary lawsuit to kill a single solar farm over it benefiting from the Inflation Reduction Act, siding with arguments from a somewhat unexpected source — the Trump administration’s Justice Department — which argued that projects qualifying for tax credits do not require federal environmental reviews.

      • We previously reported that this lawsuit filed by frustrated Kansans targeted implementation of the IRA when it first was filed in February. That was true then, but afterwards an amended complaint was filed that focused entirely on the solar farm at the heart of the case: NextEra’s Jeffrey Solar. The case focuses now on whether Jeffrey benefiting from IRA credits means it should’ve gotten reviewed under the National Environmental Policy Act.
      • Perhaps surprisingly to some, the Trump Justice Department argued against these NEPA reviews – a posture that jibes with the administration’s approach to streamlining the overall environmental analysis process but works in favor of companies using IRA credits.
      • In a ruling that came down on Tuesday, District Judge Holly Teeter ruled the landowners lacked standing to sue because “there is a mismatch between their environmental concerns tied to construction of the Jeffrey Solar Project and the tax credits and regulations,” and they did not “plausibly allege the substantial federal control and responsibility necessary to trigger NEPA review.”
      • “Plaintiffs’ claims, arguments, and requested relief have been difficult to analyze,” Teeter wrote in her opinion. “They are trying to use the procedural requirements of NEPA as a roadblock because they do not like what Congress has chosen to incentivize and what regulations Jackson County is considering. But those challenges must be made to the legislative branch, not to the judiciary.”

      2. Portage County, Wisconsin – The largest solar project in the Badger State is now one step closer to construction after settling with environmentalists concerned about impacts to the Greater Prairie Chicken, an imperiled bird species beloved in wildlife conservation circles.

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      Spotlight

      Renewables Swept Up in Data Center Backlash

      Just look at Virginia.

      A data center.
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      Solar and wind projects are getting swept up in the blowback to data center construction, presenting a risk to renewable energy companies who are hoping to ride the rise of AI in an otherwise difficult moment for the industry.

      The American data center boom is going to demand an enormous amount of electricity and renewables developers believe much of it will come from solar and wind. But while these types of energy generation may be more easily constructed than, say, a fossil power plant, it doesn’t necessarily mean a connection to a data center will make a renewable project more popular. Not to mention data centers in rural areas face complaints that overlap with prominent arguments against solar and wind – like noise and impacts to water and farmland – which is leading to unfavorable outcomes for renewable energy developers more broadly when a community turns against a data center.

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      Q&A

      How the Wind Industry Can Fight Back

      A conversation with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications

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      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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