An Influential Anti-ESG Activist Targets A Wind Farm

1. Carroll County, Arkansas – The head of an influential national right-wing advocacy group is now targeting a wind project in Arkansas, seeking federal intervention to block something that looked like it would be built.

• Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, recently called on the Trump administration to intervene against the development of Scout Clean Energy’s Nimbus wind project in Arkansas. Consumers’ Research is known as one of the leading anti-ESG advocacy organizations, playing a key role in the “anti-woke” opposition against the climate- and socially-conscious behavior of everyone from utilities to Anheuser-Busch.
• In a lengthy rant posted to X earlier this month, Hild pointed to Carroll County’s local moratorium on wind projects and claimed Nimbus being built would be “a massive win for ESG radicals – and a slap in the face for local democracy.”
• As I told you in April, the Nimbus project prompted Carroll County to enact the moratorium but it was grandfathered in because of contracts signed prior to the ban’s enactment.
• However, even though Nimbus is not sited on federal land, there is a significant weak point for the project: its potential impacts on endangered birds and bats.
• Scout Clean Energy has been working with the Fish and Wildlife Service since at least 2018 under Trump 1.0. However, the project’s habitat conservation plan was not completed before the start of the current Trump term and Scout did not submit an application for Nimbus to receive an incidental take permit from the Service until May of this year.
• Enter the Trump administration’s bird-centric wind power crackdown and the impact of Hild’s commentary comes into fuller focus. What will happen to all the years of work that Scout and the Service did? It’s unclear how the project reckons with this heightened scrutiny and risk of undue federal attention.

2. Suffolk County, New York – EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin this week endorsed efforts by activists on Long Island to oppose energy storage in their neighborhoods.

• Zeldin, a Long Island native, spoke at a rally Monday in the town of Hauppage where an outcry over a proposed BESS system has prompted the same kind of outcry I’ve been chronicling for months. He also endorsed the residents’ efforts to block the project with an op-ed in the New York Post that invoked the fire in California at Moss Landing – a facility bearing little resemblance to anything proposed in New York City.
• The EPA also released a non-binding set “federal safety toolkit” for battery energy storage siting that recommended response plans allow for “an isolation zone for large commercial BESS that is at least 330 feet, depending on the site.” The toolkit did acknowledge that BESS fires “have decreased” but noted “some recent fires have gained attention in the media.”
• It’s worth noting this is a departure from Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s bullish approach to battery storage, which was also spared in the Republican reconciliation bill.

3. Multiple counties, Indiana – This has been a very bad week for renewables in the Sooner state.

• In Clark County on Wednesday, a sea of red shirts was able to crowd out a small group of pro-solar activists to block a permit for a utility-scale BrightNight project.
• In Blackford County, a giant throng of opponents packed the hearing for a special zoning exception needed to build RWE’s Prairie Creek wind facility. They also won, sending that project into further limbo.
• And in St. Joseph County, the area’s planning commissioners passed a unique ordinance requiring solar developers to compensate land owners adjacent to their projects for any lost property value from construction and operation.

4. Brunswick County, North Carolina – Duke Energy is pouring cold water on anyone still interested in developing offshore wind off the coast of North Carolina.

• In a filing to North Carolina regulators, Duke Energy disclosed its own independent review that found that “offshore wind generation is not cost effective relative to other available resources at this time.” The assessment took into account both rising inflationary pressures and the federal pause on offshore wind permitting, which represented a “significant shift in federal energy policy.”
• Notably this assessment did not take into account the de facto repeal of the IRA’s renewable energy credits, but it did conclude this “increase[s] uncertainty” “confirms” Duke’s plans to simply “monitor the market potential for offshore wind.”

5. Bell County, Texas – We have a solar transmission stand-off brewing in Texas, of all places.

• A 200-mile transmission line under development by Oncor is galvanizing enough local opposition to prompt hundreds to sign a petition against the project and generate local news stories. Opponents are citing land use concerns as well as the fear of health risks in living near high-voltage power lines.
• It’s unlikely this line can be stopped because recent law streamlined and expedited the process for approving new transmission due to blackouts and grid strain. However, the concerns are noteworthy because significant public backlash can always change the direction of policy in a deep red state, even Texas.
• It’s also worth noting that while Texas is overall a safer state for development than most, Bell County – the area protesting this project most publicly – is a risky area to propose renewables and transmission due to its higher concentration of protected lands and political polarization, according to Heatmap Pro data.