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Hotspots

Ocean City Floats an Offshore Lawsuit, Federal Preservationists Quit Lava Ridge, and More

Here are the most notable renewable energy conflicts over the past week.

Map of US.
Heatmap Illustration

1. Worcester County, Maryland Ocean City is preparing to go to court “if necessary” to undo the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval last week of U.S. Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project, town mayor Rick Meehan told me in a statement this week.

  • Meehan listed off a litany of requests before the town apparently will be comfortable with the project, including a review of Ocean City property values, an economic study on impacts to the local economy, and safety measures to address blade failures like what happened at Vineyard Wind. Ultimately the town wants the project relocated “further to the east, as we have been asking for the past seven and a half years.”
  • A lawsuit is definitely on the table but not guaranteed: “We will be meeting with our consultants and attorneys to discuss our next course of action. The last thing we want to do is go to court but we are prepared to do so if necessary to make sure that all environmental protection laws are complied with and that the safety and well-being of all our citizens [is] protected.”

2. Magic Valley, Idaho – The Lava Ridge Wind Project would be Idaho’s biggest wind farm. But it’s facing public outcry over the impacts it could have on a historic site for remembering the impact of World War II on Japanese residents in the United States.

  • If constructed, it would surround internment camps where Japanese people were forcibly detained by the American government during the war. Activists opposed to Lava Ridge say that constructing the project would impact the solace of the space, killing the somber vibe. GOP politicians have also seized on the public relations morass.
  • On Friday, the federal advisory council overseeing historic preservation law ended its consultation with regulators on the wind project, which is proposed by a subsidiary of LS Power.
  • The council cited a number of factors, including the inability to mitigate impacts to the site as well as the unwillingness of Idaho state historic site regulators to go along with consultation.
  • This has no apparent effect on project approval – at least not yet. Whether it’ll mean much will be up to the Bureau of Land Management, which takes into consideration the views of the advisory council in its decisions.

3. Kossuth County, Iowa – Iowa’s largest county – Kossuth – is in the process of approving a nine-month moratorium on large-scale solar development.

  • Kossuth is already home to considerable renewable energy, including large wind farms operated by Invenergy and EDF Renewables.
  • Anxiety generally is bubbling in Kossuth over an outgrowth of various energy projects aimed at decarbonization and the county is also involved in opposing the Summit Carbon Pipeline.
  • County officials recently met with a researcher at Iowa State conducting federally-funded research of how solar could be deployed at the local level, per media reports.

Here’s a few more hotspots I’m watching…

  • In Indiana, Aypa Power’s attempts to build a solar farm in Madison, Indiana have hit a snag with the city council voting against the project.
  • Also in Iowa, opposition to an Apex Clean Energy wind farm could lead to a new county ordinance against wind.
  • In New York, the town of Springfield is scheduled to meet Monday on a proposed temporary wind moratorium spurred by New Leaf Energy wind project.
  • In Ohio, Whirlpool Corp. is hitting local snags as it tries to build three wind turbines.
  • In Oregon, an 11-acre solar farm from Shoestring Solar LLC was greenlit by the small town of Riddle in spite of local dissent from its would-be neighbors.

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Spotlight

The National Park Service is Fighting a Solar Farm

A battle ostensibly over endangered shrimp in Kentucky

Mammoth Cave.
Heatmap Illustration/Library of Congress, Getty Images

A national park is fighting a large-scale solar farm over potential impacts to an endangered shrimp – what appears to be the first real instance of a federal entity fighting a solar project under the Trump administration.

At issue is Geenex Solar’s 100-megawatt Wood Duck solar project in Barren County, Kentucky, which would be sited in the watershed of Mammoth Cave National Park. In a letter sent to Kentucky power regulators in April, park superintendent Barclay Trimble claimed the National Park Service is opposing the project because Geenex did not sufficiently answer questions about “irreversible harm” it could potentially pose to an endangered shrimp that lives in “cave streams fed by surface water from this solar project.”

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Hotspots

Ben Carson vs. the Anti-Solar Movement

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

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Dukes County, Massachusetts – The Supreme Court for the second time declined to take up a legal challenge to the Vineyard Wind offshore project, indicating that anti-wind activists' efforts to go directly to the high court have run aground.

  • The more worthwhile case to follow now is the Democratic state-led challenge to Trump’s executive order against offshore wind, which was filed earlier this week.
  • That lawsuit argues, among other things, that the order violated the Administrative Procedures Act and was “contrary to and in excess of” existing environmental and coastal energy leasing laws. One can easily assume the administration and Democratic states may take this case all the way to the high court depending how the federal district court judge rules in the case.

2. Brooklyn/Staten Island, New York – The battery backlash in the NYC boroughs is getting louder – and stranger – by the day.

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Q&A

Meet the Avatar Fan Fighting for Offshore Wind

A conservation with George Povall of All Our Energy

The May 8 interviewee.
Heatmap Illustration

Today’s chat is with George Povall, director of the All Our Energy pro-offshore wind environmental group. Povall – who told me he was inspired to be an environmentalist by the film Avatar – has for more than a decade been a key organizer on the ground in the Long Island area for supporting offshore wind development. But these days he spends a lot more time fighting renewables disinformation, going so far as to travel the community trying to re-educate people about this technology in light of the loud activism against it.

After the news dropped that states are suing to undo the Trump executive order against offshore wind, I wanted to chat with Povell about what environmentalists should do to combat the anti-renewables movement and whether there’s still any path forward for the industry he’s spent nearly a decade working to build as an activist.

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