The Fight

Sign In or Create an Account.

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

Hotspots

Renewables at War in the Worcesters

And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Worcester County, Massachusetts – The town of Oakham is piping mad about battery energy storage.

  • A Rhynland Energy BESS facility filed a request with Massachusetts regulators in April to override longstanding local reservations against battery storage, dating back to a previous project fight from 2022. Local conservative organizations have been amplifying opposition to the project.
  • Rhyland may be able to sidestep Oakham’s opposition thanks to a new permitting law providing for exemptions from local restrictions, a la Michigan and other “primacy” states.

2. Worcester County, Maryland – A different drama is going down in a different Worcester County on Maryland’s eastern shore, where fishing communities are rejecting financial compensation from U.S. Wind tied to MarWin, its offshore project.

  • U.S. Wind offered $20 million to fishing communities directly, including a large “Maryland Fishing Community Resilience Fund.” But the mayor of Ocean City has rejected the proposal, calling it a buyout.
  • This is yet another example of the struggles in community benefit approaches that include direct payments: they can very quickly backfire.

3. Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania – A Pivot Energy solar project is moving ahead with getting its conditional use permit in the small town of Ransom, but is dealing with considerable consternation from residents next door.

  • Local reporting indicates that neighbors are upset about proximity primarily and successfully got Pivot to move its project back to a 500-foot buffer from their property lines. A decision will be made on the project in 45 days and it is unclear where the local officials will land.
  • Two things leave me pessimistic about its chances: First, the project site features Heatmap Pro’s highest risk rating at a 99. Second, the county is something of a graveyard of solar farms; multiple nearby projects have been killed by local governments.

4. Cumberland County, North Carolina – It’s hard out here for a 5-megawatt solar project, apparently.

  • The Cumberland County Board of Commissioners has rejected a solar project requested by the city of Fayetteville’s public works panel, apparently without a fulsome effort by the commissioners to resolve their concerns with the city’s officials.

5. Barren County, Kentucky – Remember the Geenex solar project getting in the fight with a National Park? The county now formally has a restrictive ordinance on solar… that will allow projects to move through permitting.

6. Stark County, Ohio – Stark Solar is no more, thanks to the Ohio Public Siting Board.

  • If you remember, the OPBS rejected Stark Solar’s project. The company is now declining to appeal, telling the public in a statement that it is dropping development.
  • Stark had the option to appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court, which recently affirmed a favorable ruling by the OPBS for Harvey Solar in Licking County. It’s unclear why the company opted not to appeal, although perhaps getting the court to affirm a green light is easier than reversing a rejection.

7. Cheboygan County, Michigan – A large EDP Renewables solar project called the Northern Waters Solar Park is entering the community relations phase and – stop me if you’ve heard this before – it’s getting grumbles from locals.

  • Locals parried EDP with questions at a recent community meeting and reportedly have the backing of Michigan state senator Cam Cavitt, a lawmaker involved in leading the effort to undo the state’s permitting primacy law.

8. Adams County, Illinois – A Summit Ridge Energy solar project located near the proposal in the town of Ursa we’ve been covering is moving forward without needing to pay the city taxes, due to the project being just outside city limits.

  • The city is in control of the project and will decide whether to permit it but it will not pay the city taxes. Making matters more difficult, the project will require the conversion of agricultural land to industrial zoning. We’ll have to wait and see how Summit Ridge navigates this tricky wicket.

9. Cottonwood County, Minnesota – National Grid Renewables has paused work on the Plum Creek wind farm despite having received key permits to build, a sign that economic headwinds may be more powerful than your average NIMBY these days.

  • Plum Creek, as far as I can tell, faced little headwinds of its own locally. NGR cited the impacts of tariffs on construction costs for the pause as well as inflation.

10. Oklahoma County, Oklahoma – Turns out you can’t kill wind in Oklahoma that easily.

  • Despite a rabid activist campaign to get the Sooner state to stop wind altogether, the state’s GOP Senate pro tem Lonnie Paxton said in a public statement issued Tuesday that he would not allow passage of legislation mirroring a bill from the state House that would set what he called “unreasonable” setbacks on the tip height of a wind turbine.
  • Paxton also called the bill “overreaching legislation that is a massive violation of private property rights.”
  • This may doom the chances of a state-wide restrictive ordinance bill advancing this legislation session – barring any massive unforeseen changes to the state’s political, err, winds. (Please clap.)

11. Washoe County, Nevada – Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has opened another solar project in the desert up for public comment.

  • NextEra’s Dodge Flat II solar project would produce 200 megawatts. BLM’s request for comment specifically asks for input under the federal historic preservation law, an archeological preservation statute focused on protecting potentially important artifacts buried underground.

12. Shasta County, California – The California Energy Commission this week held a public hearing on the ConnectGen Fountain Wind project, which we previously told you already has gotten a negative reaction from the panel’s staff.

  • Shasta County, a rural Central Valley community featuring Heatmap Pro’s worst risk rating in the state, has rejected Fountain Wind twice and has its own website dedicated to opposing the project on predictable viewshed and property value concerns. Staff on the commission had their own issues with the environmental impacts of the project.
  • A vote on Fountain Wind is expected in late July.
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
Q&A

How the Wind Industry Can Fight Back

A conversation with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications

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.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

A New York Town Bans Both Renewable Energy And Data Centers

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

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.

  • Chautauqua, a vacation town in southern New York, has now reportedly issued a one-year moratorium on wind projects – though it’s not entirely obvious whether a wind project is in active development within its boundaries, and town officials have confessed none are being planned as of now.
  • Apparently, per local press, this temporary ban is tied to a broader effort to update the town’s overall land use plan to “manage renewable energy and other emerging high-impact uses” – and will lead to an ordinance that restricts data centers as well as solar and wind projects.
  • I anticipate this strategy where towns update land use plans to target data centers and renewables at the same time will be a lasting trend.

2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Spotlight

The Wind Projects Breaking the Wyoming GOP

It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.

At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow