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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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Spotlight

Anti-Wind Activists Have a Big Ask for the Big Man

The Trump administration is now being lobbied to nix offshore wind projects already under construction.

Trump and offshore wind.
Getty Images / Heatmap Illustration

Anti-wind activists have joined with well-connected figures in conservative legal and energy circles to privately lobby the Trump administration to undo permitting decisions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to documents obtained by Heatmap.

Representatives of conservative think tanks and legal nonprofits — including the Caesar Rodney Institute, the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT — sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dated February 11 requesting that the Trump administration “immediately revoke” letters from NOAA to 11 offshore wind projects authorizing “incidental takes,” a term of regulatory art referencing accidental and permissible harassment, injury, or potential deaths under federal endangered species and mammal protection laws. The letter lays out a number of perceived issues with how those approvals have historically been issued for offshore wind companies and claims the government has improperly analyzed the cumulative effects of adding offshore wind to the ocean’s existing industrialization. NOAA oversees marine species protection.

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Hotspots

The Great Battery PR Fire of 2025

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

Renewable energy fights
Heatmap Illustration

1. Monterey County, California – The Moss Landing battery fire is now the big renewables PR crisis we should all be watching, even with Trump 2.0 going on.

  • Whereas before a battery fire news cycle might last a week, this story’s now in thermal runaway, as The New York Times has taken to profiling the sick and injured. Affected residents have now sued Vistra Energy, operator of the Moss Landing battery storage facility, for damages. Famed environmentalist Erin Brockovich is now involved, working in tandem with victims’ attorneys. Nearby San Luis Obispo and Orange counties have now issued temporary moratoriums on new battery storage.
  • It’s worth considering how much of this is unique to Moss Landing. The residents’ legal comaplint takes aim at the use of nickel manganese cobalt batteries (NCM) for storage, as opposed to lithium iron-phosphate (LFP) chemistries. NCM is an historically popular battery chemistry used in consumer electronics and electric vehicles … but not as often with storage.
  • “Because they are safer, most energy storage projects around the world have been transitioning to LFP batteries,” the complaint states. “NMC batteries undergo thermal runaway at a lower temperature and release more energy from decomposition, while LFP batteries can withstand higher temperatures than NCM batteries before beginning the thermal runaway process.”
  • The lawsuit also claims the fire suppression system at Moss Landing was faulty and contrasts its behavior with a fire at a “neighboring Tesla project, which used safer and less volatile LFP batteries,” and which it says was “quickly extinguished.”

2. Portage County, Wisconsin – Doral Renewables’ Vista Sands solar project is facing a prolonged legal fight with the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, a state outdoor recreation and wildlife advocacy group. At the center of the conflict is a bird that’s long bedeviled developers of all stripes: the greater prairie chicken.

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Policy Watch

Building Renewable Energy on Castles of Sand

A look at the biggest news around renewable energy policy this week.

Wind turbines
Getty Images / Heatmap Illustration

1. The anti-renewable locavore – Republican lawmakers are aiming to empower localities to block renewables projects, a similar scene to what’s played out in Ohio, where state legislators gave towns the power to have a final word on development instead of state-led entities.

2. Sgamma thoughts – Trump selected Kathleen Sgamma, head of the pro-oil Western Energy Alliance, to head the Bureau of Land Management. What does this mean for renewables developers? It’s hard to tell because so much of her time was spent on a single mission: liberating as much oil from the ground as possible.

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