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Hotspots

Vineyard Wind’s New Fight

And more of the week’s biggest conflicts in renewable energy.

Map.
Heatmap illustration.

1. Nantucket County, Massachusetts – A new group – Keep Nantucket Wild – is mobilizing opposition to the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project, seeking to capitalize on the recent blade breakage to sever the town of Nantucket’s good neighbor agreement with project developer Avangrid.

  • Keep Nantucket Wild was started weeks ago by raw bar restaurateur Jesse Sandole and yoga studio owner Evie O’Connor. The group already has amassed more than 1,000 signatures on a petition to the town select board to pull out of the good neighbor agreement.
  • Town officials have previously said they will renegotiate the pact, which included a $16 million company payment into a community fund and promises to reduce nighttime visual impacts.

2. East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana – One lowkey local election this fall may decide the future of Louisiana’s renewables: the swing seat on the state’s Public Service Commission, which is being vacated this year by a retiring moderate Republican.

  • Only 3% of Louisiana’s power generation came from renewables last year but that’s poised for significant growth thanks to offshore wind development in the Gulf and the PSC’s decision over the summer to let Entergy expand its solar capacity in the state by 3 GW.
  • State Sen. J.P. Coussan is one of the leading candidates for the opening on the PSC. A Republican, he said at an event last month that he’s open to more solar but is worried about “losing the farmland” that could be used by the sugar business. He also believes renewables will ultimately make up “lower than overall 10% of the power matrix.”
  • There are two other candidates for the open seat: Republican former state Sen. Julie Quinn, who is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative and opposes renewables, and Democrat Nick Laborde, who deeply supports renewables but has never served in public office and currently works in human resources.

3. Logan County, Ohio – Invenergy’s Fountain Point solar project cleared a hurdle with the Ohio Power Siting Board last month. But the 280 megawatt proposal may face a lengthy appeals process, according to Mike Yoder, a county commissioner who had recently served as an ad hoc member of the OPSB.

  • Yoder, whose county is where the project is proposed, told local radio on Monday that the project is not affected by a recent law empowering counties against solar and wind as challenges to the project began before the law was passed.
  • But discussing potential challenges to the state Supreme Court, Yoder said he expects construction is still “well down the road.”
  • “I know that we got some emails from folks who were concerned we would be voting on it and moving forward and everything happened in two or three days and that’s not really the way it’s going to be,” he said.

4. Riverside County, California – The federal government is now taking public comment on a 100+ megawatt solar farm proposed in the California desert in an area demarcated as a priority for energy development.

  • The Sapphire Solar project, which was proposed by EDF Renewables, has also been targeted by wildlife conservationists focused on tortoise protection. Sound familiar?
  • We’ll find out whether environmental concerns pervade at the government’s Oct. 24 in person and virtual public meetings on the project, which could shed new light on how stakeholders are grappling with solar projects on federally-preferred areas with wildlife conflicts.

Here’s some more fights we’re watching closely…

In Maryland, commissioners in eastern Berlin County have rejected a TurningPoint Energy utility-scale solar farm.

In New Jersey, the group Save Long Beach Island filed a notice of intent to sue against the Atlantic Shores offshore wind approvals last week.

In New York, the town of Oyster Bay has extended its battery storage moratorium for six months to block a project proposed by Jupiter Power Company.

In North Dakota, regulators told staff to put together a final order on the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline, though no date or decision has been discussed.

In Oregon, grassroots opposition is mobilizing against a Hanwha Qcells solar manufacturing project.

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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.

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.

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

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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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