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Hotspots

A Midwestern Shot/Chaser for Renewables

The week’s most important conflicts around the energy transition.

Jael Holzman •
10/23/2024
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1. Madison County, Ohio – All eyes are now on the Ohio Supreme Court, after opponents of the nation’s largest agri-voltaics project – Savion’s Oak Run solar farm – yesterday formally appealed a key approval from the state Power Siting Board.

     
  • We’ve previously explored how the fight over Oak Run is a flashpoint for solar on farmland. But perhaps even more important: it could decide the threshold for rejecting renewables in Ohio towns and counties that don’t want more projects.
  • Matt Eisenson at Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Law represents landowners intervening in support of the project. The big legal question in this appeal, he said, “is the extent to which public opinion and opposition by local government officials can be viewed as a proxy for the public interest.”
  • “[A]s a matter of law, one of the criteria for approval by the Ohio Power Siting Board is whether a project will serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity,” he explained in an email last night. “Can the Siting Board conclude, on the basis of local opposition alone, that a project does not serve the public interest?”
  • Eisenson said other legal challenges against other solar projects – Lightsource bp’s Birch Solar and Vesper Energy’s Kingwood Solar – could also decide this question. But crucially, Oak Run is the lone project of the three that was approved by the siting board.

2. Nassau County, New York – RWE and National Grid submitted the nation’s biggest offshore wind proposal to date to be built in the New York Bight with interconnection points in Brooklyn and Long Island …

     
  • …and days later, the member of Congress representing the Long Island connection point – Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito – came out against offshore wind.
  • Ironically, D’Esposito is the top Republican on the congressional offshore wind caucus.
  • “I was just asked the other day, why don’t you support offshore wind and certain battery storage?” D’Esposito said at a debate last week. “I don’t really see how building offshore wind farms and giant battery storage facilities is going to stop flooding in low-lying areas.”
  • If D’Esposito wins re-election, I expect him to become a Chris Smith-like figure in New York and take up the cause opposing offshore wind projects. It won’t matter for legislation – but as we’ve shown with other project fights, field hearings and oversight letters can be harmful to an individual project’s public perception.

3. Swift County, Minnesota – Rarely do we talk pro-renewables decisions here in The Fight’s Hotspots… but that changes today thanks to a rural Minnesota county rejecting a moratorium.

  • County commissioners blocked a moratorium, proposed by a petition signed by over 400 locals, for the second time last week, according to local media outlet West Central Tribune. If enacted, per the Tribune, it would bar Apex Clean Energy from constructing at least one utility scale solar farm in the western part of the county that could generate up to 400 megawatts in carbon-free power.
  • The commissioners have instead delegated the moratorium conversation to a renewable energy-focused committee with no clear timetable to conclude its work.

4. Fayette County, Pennsylvania – Another spot to watch for an anti-solar and wind ordinance is this county where developers are vying to stop restrictive property setback requirements.

     
  • If adopted, solar projects would have to be built in areas zoned for light or heavy industry and get special permits. They’d also have to be 300-600 feet from property lines and 1,200 feet from state roads.
  • Commissioners told the public and would-be solar developer Prospect 14 last week at a hearing it would study the legal and technical details of the subject and vote on the proposal at a later, unspecified date.
  • I’m not optimistic this county will side with the developers. The county zoning commission just rejected a Susquehanna Solar project because it was proposed too close to a school. The county also swung hard for Donald Trump in 2016, which Heatmap Pro’s data finds to be a flashing danger sign for developers.

5. Carroll County, Maryland – Developers have released the route for the Piedmont Reliability Project, a transmission proposal that will connect to a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and will criss-cross Maryland. Some of the power will feed to data centers in Northern Virginia.

  • You can see a map of the transmission line route here. The line is necessary to avoid blackouts from coal plant retirements, which is partially why we included it on Heatmap’s list of 10 at-risk projects in the energy transition. (I would note state officials have stated this project is not a part of their climate goals, likely because some of the energy will feed data centers.)
  • Piedmont’s biggest hurdles are the same rural Maryland counties opposed to solar and wind on farmland. Residents are in outcry mode.
  • Public meetings on the proposal will be Nov. 12 in Baltimore County, Nov. 13 in Carroll County, and Nov. 14 in Frederick County. Dear reader, should I go to one?

Here’s what else we’ve been watching…

In Idaho, regulators approved a solar project on state endowment land – and of course, some Republican politicians are grousing about it.

In Kentucky, only three people showed up to oppose NextEra’s Weirs Creek solar project.

In Maine, state regulators were rejected by federal officials after a request for money to fund a proposed offshore wind construction site on Sears Island.

In Michigan, towns are sounding like they’re going to sue over a local control law intended to speed up renewables deployment.

In Virginia, county regulators are battling one another over a 2,200 acre solar farm proposed by AES Corporation in Isle of Wight county.

In New York, the upstate village of Wilson has enacted a battery storage moratorium.

Also in New York, Attentive Energy pulled out of the fifth offshore wind solicitation.

Jael Holzman profile image

Jael Holzman

Jael is a senior reporter at Heatmap. Previously, she was an energy and climate policy reporter for Axios and covered energy transition resources for E&E News. She lives in Washington, D.C.

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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.

Jael Holzman •
07/03/2025
The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

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.

Jael Holzman •
07/03/2025
A data center.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

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

Jael Holzman •
06/26/2025
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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