The Fight

Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Hotspots

The Top Five Renewable Energy Fights of the Year

A look at 2024’s most notorious conflicts in the energy transition.

A map of America.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Alright, friends. It’s time for a special edition of The Fight’s Hotspots, where we walk you through what we believe were the five most important project conflicts of the year. We decided this list based on the notoriety of the fight within the renewables sector as well as whether our reporting found it to be significant for the entire industry. And we included the opposition scores for these projects based on our internal Heatmap Pro data to help you better understand whether these fights were flukes or quite predictable.

We hope this helps you all in this, errhmm, trying time for developers right now.

1. Lava Ridge’s bad year – Magic Valley, Idaho (36 opposition score)

  • LS Energy’s Lava Ridge wind project might wind up the textbook example of how not to build a wind farm. The developer had initially botched getting consent from those most passionate about a nearby historic World War II internment camp for Japanese Americans, so despite its site in a gust-heavy rural landscape and a state ordinarily friendly to wind power, the project remains in hot water.
  • We previously told you how Idaho Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho warned of a potential executive order targeting Lava Ridge’s permit approvals.
  • However, a new wrinkle: the federal government completed its permitting for Lava Ridge and formally approved the project. It also appears from media reports that at least some activists’ concerns have been tempered by buffers the federal government placed on future wind development near the historic site.
  • Is… this victory? Unfortunately, plenty could still happen here. If a party were to sue, a future Trump administration would easily have the right to negotiate a settlement over that challenge and say it needs more analysis. I wouldn’t consider this project safe yet.

2. Oregon opts out of offshore wind – Coos County, Oregon (50 opposition score)

  • All of the sudden, over the course of an unusually warm September week, Oregon’s Democratic political leaders abandoned the development of floating offshore wind following an opposition campaign tied to local consternation and tribal heritage.
  • As we explained at the time, this led to the federal government canceling what would’ve been Oregon’s first lease sale for floating offshore wind. Now there’s essentially no chance of a lease sale for at least another four years, because Trump promised to halt all offshore wind development.
  • What does this mean? For starters, Democrats can turn into opponents of renewables too, overruling potential benefits for the climate or reliability, when pieces of their fractious coalitions turn sour over the perceived harms they see in development. (See also: the Piedmont transmission line in Maryland).

3. Oak Run and angry voltaics – Madison County, Ohio (96 opposition score)

  • Savion’s Oak Run was supposed to be the model for how to build solar in harmony with a farming community. By co-locating solar panel siting and some crop production, it was supposed to show that solar can be in the same place as farmland without harming even a scintilla of the food supply.
  • It didn’t go that way. Instead, Oak Run this year cemented itself as a poster child for conflict in renewables-hostile Ohio. We’ve explained a legal challenge over the project will decide the fate of all other renewables systems in the state.
  • The farmland dilemma itself is a bit of a misinformation problem. A USDA study released in September found that only up to roughly a fifth of farmland used for solar between 2012 and 2020 was taken out of production once panels were uninstalled.
  • And Oak Run’s issues itself may have ties to conspiracies, as the project’s loose connection to tech billionaire Bill Gates has become a bit of a rallying cry for local opponents.

4. bp’s Kentucky heartaches – Elizabethtown, Kentucky (63 opposition score)

  • Quite a bit has been written about the anti-renewables group Citizens for Responsible Solar. But it’s still hard not to marvel at just how easily they win in places in Kentucky, where a small but mighty group of residents have mobilized against oil giant bp in the city of Elizabethtown to all but kill a 128 megawatt solar farm.
  • We told you a month ago that we thought CRS would win against bp despite a clear plan to use private land and local donations to finally get shovels and steel into the ground – because it doesn’t take that many people to convince a city that popular will is on the side of the opposition.
  • Well, it turns out we were right. CRS is now celebrating that it got Elizabethtown to deny bp’s request for annexation to use the private land, after a large group showed up to the preceding city council meeting.
  • Elizabethtown’s denial has not previously been reported by the media, which is a big reason why Telesto Solar is on our list – it is our best indication yet that massive utility-scale solar projects might be getting snuffed out without the broader public knowing.

5. Battery fire fears beat blackouts – Katy, Texas (54 opposition score)

  • No story sent a chill down my spine this year like what happened in Katy, a small city outside of Houston, where fears fomented after a battery storage fire near San Diego, California, led to such a strong anti-battery fervor that it killed a 500 megawatt project in a blackout prone area.
  • Why? At the vote to reject the project, Katy City Councilor Gina Hicks, voted against constructing the battery project even though she thought it would lead to blackouts. Popular will had won out so profoundly she felt as a “public servant” she had to vote no.
  • “I feel like this is a mob vote,” she said at the October council vote. “Just know that we as a community chose this and I will represent what the community wants versus what I feel is personally best for this decision.”
  • I chose Katy over the San Diego fight because it demonstrated how quickly a kernel of truth — rare but possible battery fires — can ricochet across social media and prompt action in other parts of the country.
Yellow

This article is exclusively
for Heatmap Plus subscribers.

Go deeper inside the politics, projects, and personalities
shaping the energy transition.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Hotspots

Fox News Goes After a Solar Farm

And more of this week’s top renewable energy fights across the country.

Map of U.S. renewable energy.
Heatmap Illustration

1. Otsego County, Michigan – The Mitten State is proving just how hard it can be to build a solar project in wooded areas. Especially once Fox News gets involved.

  • Last week, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources said it wanted to lease more than 400 acres of undeveloped state-owned forestland for part of a much larger RWE Clean Energy solar project near the northern Michigan town of Gaylord.
  • Officials said they were approached by the company about the land. But the news sparked an immediate outcry, as state elected Republicans – and some Democrats – demanded to know why a forest would be cleared for ‘green’ energy. Some called for government firings.
  • Then came the national news coverage. On Friday, Fox News hosted a full four-minute segment focused on this one solar farm featuring iconoclastic activist Michael Shellenberger.
  • A few days later, RWE told the media it would not develop the project on state lands.
  • “[D]uring the development process, we conducted outreach to all landowners adjacent to the project location, including the Michigan Department of Natural Resources,” the company said in a statement to the Petoskey News-Review, adding it instead decided to move forward with leasing property from two private landowners.

2. Atlantic County, New Jersey – Opponents of offshore wind in Atlantic City are trying to undo an ordinance allowing construction of transmission cables that would connect the Atlantic Shores offshore wind project to the grid.

Keep reading...Show less
Policy Watch

How to Solve a Problem Like a Wind Ban

And more of this week’s top policy news around renewables.

Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Trump’s Big Promise – Our nation’s incoming president is now saying he’ll ban all wind projects on Day 1, an expansion of his previous promise to stop only offshore wind.

  • “They litter our country like paper, like dropping garbage in a field,” Trump said at a press conference Tuesday. “We’re going to try and have a policy where no windmills are built.”
  • Is this possible? It would be quite tricky, as the president only has control over the usage of federal lands and waters. While offshore wind falls entirely under the president’s purview, many onshore wind projects themselves fall entirely on state lands.
  • This is where the whole “wind kills birds” argument becomes important. Nearly all wind projects have at least some federal nexus because of wildlife protection laws, such as the Endangered Species Act and Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
  • Then there are the cables connecting these projects to the grid and interstate transmission projects that may require approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
  • I’m personally doubtful he will actually stop all wind in the U.S., though I do think offshore wind in its entirety is at risk (which I’ve written about). Trump has a habit of conflating things, and in classic fashion, he only spoke at the press conference about offshore wind projects. I think he was only referring to offshore wind, though I’m willing to eat my words.

2. The Big Nuclear Lawsuit – Texas and Utah are suing to kill the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to license small modular reactors.

Keep reading...Show less
Q&A

Are Anti-Renewables Activists Going Unchallenged?

A conversation with J. Timmons Roberts, executive director of Brown University’s Climate Social Science Network


J. Timmons Roberts
Heatmap Illustration

This week’s interview is with Brown University professor J. Timmons Roberts. Those of you familiar with the fight over offshore wind may not know Roberts by name, but you’re definitely familiar with his work: He and his students have spearheaded some of the most impactful research conducted on anti-offshore wind opposition networks. This work is a must-read for anyone who wants to best understand how the anti-renewables movement functions and why it may be difficult to stop it from winning out.

So with Trump 2.0 on the verge of banning offshore wind outright, I decided to ask Roberts what he thinks developers should be paying attention to at this moment. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Keep reading...Show less