A Midwestern Shot/Chaser for Renewables

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.