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A conversation with Matilda Krieder of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
This week I spoke with Matilda Krieder, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, about a database she and her colleagues released this week showing how onshore and offshore wind developers use community benefit agreements – a form of compact aimed at improving local benefits from projects. We talked about whether communities really see the agreements as helpful or if there’s a better way.
The following is an abridged version of our conversation edited for clarity and space:
How much have you heard from people concerned that community benefit agreements are a form of financial influence or a false promise where they don’t receive real benefits?
I haven’t heard very much about the not-receiving end of things — and the reason I’ll say that is at least on the land-based wind side, an actual community benefit agreement is pretty uncommon. The vast majority of the time it’s just donations. And that, I think, is less likely to have the false promise thing because developers are handing over a one-time check, so there’s not really a perception that it won’t come to fruition.
So walk me through what your research shows with respect to how effective community benefit agreements are in assuaging local opposition to a project?
Unfortunately my research is not super helpful there. Because we didn’t look at failed projects, I don’t think I can say anything about whether [community benefit agreements] help or not.
But the existing literature that other people have done is not really positive on the connection between community benefits and improving community perception of projects, which is really interesting to me because I think people in the U.S. are really buying into it. Especially for offshore wind. So much pressure is being put on community benefits agreements as the thing that’ll change everything. And I support developers giving them, even if it doesn’t change anything, because it’s a net good. But I do wonder if developers or anybody setting regulations are reading what’s been studied. If so, I don’t know if they’d be putting all their eggs in this basket.
Okay then what if you walked me through the benefits you’ve found, at least in wind?
So it’s very different from offshore wind to land-based wind. In offshore wind, we’re seeing huge amounts of money, especially in the communities that host cable landings for the projects, because that’s the only point in offshore wind where the local government has any way to stop or change the way the project is developed. The cable landing is where you’re seeing $150 million [contributions]. And that hasn’t been happening long enough to measure the impacts of school funding or taxes over time.
The agreements that are more likely to be impactful are the ones that are more specific. I point to the Salem offshore wind terminal as a positive example because it’s such specific funding. You can tell they did the work to understand what the community’s priorities were and they directed funding to those areas.
In terms of land-based wind, it would be up to who you talk to. I’ve talked to county commissioners who’ve spoken really positively about the things that would be considered small potatoes. Not millions of dollars but directed funding in a specific way that met the community’s priorities and that changed people’s perception of the project. That’s a very small sample size, so you can’t identify a trend there, but I think it has potential.
I’m starting to view the donation side more positively than a lot of people too because a community benefit agreement most of the time is going to the local government, [and] a lot of people distrust their local government.
So instead, donations directly to services instead of county or local governments?
Yeah. That’s just a function of how in agreements, 95% of the funding goes to a local government. And people may not ever know what happens to it after that. It’s less visible.
What are you hearing from communities about community benefit agreements then?
I hear, how do we get one? The problem is, it’s still entirely in the developers’ hands so sometimes I feel a bit limited in the advice I can give to get one. It kind of comes down to what leverage you have with a developer.
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A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.
2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.
Long Islanders, meanwhile, are showing up in support of offshore wind, and more in this week’s edition of The Fight.
Local renewables restrictions are on the rise in the Hawkeye State – and it might have something to do with carbon pipelines.
Iowa’s known as a renewables growth area, producing more wind energy than any other state and offering ample acreage for utility-scale solar development. This has happened despite the fact that Iowa, like Ohio, is home to many large agricultural facilities – a trait that has often fomented conflict over specific projects. Iowa has defied this logic in part because the state was very early to renewables, enacting a state portfolio standard in 1983, signed into law by a Republican governor.
But something else is now on the rise: Counties are passing anti-renewables moratoria and ordinances restricting solar and wind energy development. We analyzed Heatmap Pro data on local laws and found a rise in local restrictions starting in 2021, leading to nearly 20 of the state’s 99 counties – about one fifth – having some form of restrictive ordinance on solar, wind or battery storage.
What is sparking this hostility? Some of it might be counties following the partisan trend, as renewable energy has struggled in hyper-conservative spots in the U.S. But it may also have to do with an outsized focus on land use rights and energy development that emerged from the conflict over carbon pipelines, which has intensified opposition to any usage of eminent domain for energy development.
The central node of this tension is the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline. As we explained in a previous edition of The Fight, the carbon transportation network would cross five states, and has galvanized rural opposition against it. Last November, I predicted the Summit pipeline would have an easier time under Trump because of his circle’s support for oil and gas, as well as the placement of former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary, as Burgum was a major Summit supporter.
Admittedly, this prediction has turned out to be incorrect – but it had nothing to do with Trump. Instead, Summit is now stalled because grassroots opposition to the pipeline quickly mobilized to pressure regulators in states the pipeline is proposed to traverse. They’re aiming to deny the company permits and lobbying state legislatures to pass bills banning the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines. One of those states is South Dakota, where the governor last month signed an eminent domain ban for CO2 pipelines. On Thursday, South Dakota regulators denied key permits for the pipeline for the third time in a row.
Another place where the Summit opposition is working furiously: Iowa, where opposition to the CO2 pipeline network is so intense that it became an issue in the 2020 presidential primary. Regulators in the state have been more willing to greenlight permits for the project, but grassroots activists have pressured many counties into some form of opposition.
The same counties with CO2 pipeline moratoria have enacted bans or land use restrictions on developing various forms of renewables, too. Like Kossuth County, which passed a resolution decrying the use of eminent domain to construct the Summit pipeline – and then three months later enacted a moratorium on utility-scale solar.
I asked Jessica Manzour, a conservation program associate with Sierra Club fighting the Summit pipeline, about this phenomenon earlier this week. She told me that some counties are opposing CO2 pipelines and then suddenly tacking on or pivoting to renewables next. In other cases, counties with a burgeoning opposition to renewables take up the pipeline cause, too. In either case, this general frustration with energy companies developing large plots of land is kicking up dust in places that previously may have had a much lower opposition risk.
“We painted a roadmap with this Summit fight,” said Jess Manzour, a campaigner with Sierra Club involved in organizing opposition to the pipeline at the grassroots level, who said zealous anti-renewables activists and officials are in some cases lumping these items together under a broad umbrella. ”I don’t know if it’s the people pushing for these ordinances, rather than people taking advantage of the situation.”