The Race to Qualify for Renewable Tax Credits Is on in Wisconsin

1. St. Croix County, Wisconsin - Solar opponents in this county see themselves as the front line in the fight over Trump’s “Big Beautiful” law and its repeal of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.

• Xcel’s Ten Mile Creek solar project doesn’t appear to have begun construction yet, and like many facilities it must begin that process by about this time next year or it will lose out on the renewable energy tax credits cut short by the new law. Ten Mile Creek has essentially become a proxy for the larger fight to build before time runs out to get these credits.
• Xcel told county regulators last month that it hoped to file an application to the Wisconsin Public Services Commission by the end of this year. But critics of the project are now telling their allies they anticipate action sooner in order to make the new deadline for the tax credit — and are campaigning for the county to intervene if that occurs.
• “Be on the lookout for Xcel to accelerate the PSC submittal,” Ryan Sherley, a member of the St. Croix Board of Supervisors, wrote on Facebook. “St. Croix County needs to legally intervene in the process to ensure the PSC properly hears the citizens and does not rush this along in order to obtain tax credits.”

2. Barren County, Kentucky - How much wood could a Wood Duck solar farm chuck if it didn’t get approved in the first place? We may be about to find out.

• The Geenex solar project got predictably panned at the Kentucky State Board of Electric Generation and Transmission Siting Board, which I previewed earlier this month.
• At the heart of the matter is that a multitude of irritated residents spanning various backgrounds there simply do not want it, and a National Park Service letter opposing the project has added fuel to that fire.
• The outpouring of anger means regulators very well may say no here, but we’ll have to wait until a final decision comes in October.

3. Iberia Parish, Louisiana - Another potential proxy battle over IRA tax credits is going down in Louisiana, where residents are calling to extend a solar moratorium that is about to expire so projects can’t start construction.

• Iberia Parish enacted a one-year ban last year that was intended to bide time so local officials could craft a restrictive ordinance that allowed for some solar projects to come and provide new revenues to the community while appeasing solar opponents.
• Residents packed a parish council meeting last week, however, calling for the moratorium to be extended — which, if they succeed in getting a one-year extension, would effectively mean any developers eyeing the area would have to wait too long to receive the tax credits.

4. Baltimore County, Maryland – The fight over a transmission line in Maryland could have lasting impacts for renewable energy across the country.

• The Piedmont Reliability Project would connect data centers in Virginia to power plants in Pennsylvania by criss-crossing Maryland. Its construction has engendered rampant opposition across the political spectrum, largely because of potential impacts to farmland.
• What does this have to do with all-American renewable energy? Well, in a previously unreported letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins earlier this month, activists opposed to the Piedmont project called on the agency to “issue federal guidance discouraging the siting of non-agricultural infrastructure” on “productive or conserved farmland.”
• This sounds eerily similar to the direction I reported in May that USDA was heading in, implementing regulations and guidance to clamp down on solar and wind on farmland. Given the high level of opposition to the Piedmont project, I’m a little concerned the fight over these wires could open a portal to broader action.

5. Worcester County, Maryland – Elsewhere in Maryland, the MarWin offshore wind project appears to have landed in the crosshairs of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency.

• EPA’s Region 3 office told the state of Maryland it must re-issue its final approval of the project last month and amend it to clarify federal authority over its appeal process. The letter stated that Maryland issued the permit “under federal law authority,” and that “failure to rectify this error could result in invalidation of the permit on appeal.”
• Why would the EPA care about who will be appealing this permit decision? The amendments EPA is asking for would allow challenges to the permit to go through federal processes, which have proven more hostile to offshore wind than the state’s regulatory appeals route.
• TL;DR, in the words of the Maryland Association of Counties, EPA is now “challeng[ing] the validity of a state permit.”

6. Clark County, Ohio - Consider me wishing Invenergy good luck getting a new solar farm permitted in Ohio.

• Invenergy held its first public event on the Sloopy Solar project in the township of Harmony, and it doesn’t seem to have gone well: It was met with considerable organized opposition, as it appears a grassroots organization — the Harmony Farmland Preservation Coalition — had already been laying groundwork to make life more difficult for solar in this county.
• Apparently, Invenergy plans to submit its formal application to the Ohio Power Siting Board by the end of this year. I’m not entirely sure that will work out in the company’s favor as staunch opposition may result in a protracted appeals process, especially if townships start passing resolutions against the project.

7. Searcy County, Arkansas - An anti-wind state legislator has gone and posted a slide deck that RWE provided to county officials, ginning up fresh uproar against potential wind development.

• Arkansas has become one of the most hostile states to wind energy in the U.S., this year passing one of the first state-wide restrictive laws on the sector in modern history.
• One of the legislators supportive of that push was Arkansas State Senator Missy Thomas Irvin, who seems to be picking fights with individual projects, too. Most recently, she posted to Facebook a slide deck for the Chief Wiley wind project submitted to local regulators for which there is little information online. RWE had recently visited Searcy County to meet with local landowners about the prospective plans, but I have trouble finding out much else about the project (so I can’t blame locals for being surprised by it).