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A conversation with Devin Hartman of R Street
Today’s special Q&A is with an old source of mine, Devin Hartman, energy and environment policy director for the conservative D.C. think tank R Street.
When I used to cover Congress, Devin was one of the few climate-minded conservatives willing to offer a candid, principled take on what could happen in that always deliberative body. I decided for our year-end edition to ask him a lot of questions, including an important one: will Trump make it easier or more difficult to permit solar and wind projects?
His answer – that it is very much possible – led us once again down the rabbit hole of conspiracy-powered politics.
The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Let’s start with the U.S. climate elephant in the room – what do you think will happen to the Inflation Reduction Act next Congress?
I have not talked to any Republican staff, members of Congress, or strategists that think full IRA repeal is on the table. Just nip that conversation in the bud right now. That said, they will need to find where to cut some tax credits to pay for the tax extensions. There will be strong pressure to modify those subsidies. So I think subsidy reform is very much on the table but full IRA repeal is not. More specifically, Republicans will be eyeing the electric vehicle tax credit and the PTC and ITC that primarily focus on wind and solar.
Most of the expenditures under IRA are subsidies for mature technologies. I think what you’re going to see is something that is a phase down if not a staggered phase out as on the table for mature technologies, especially wind, solar and EVs.
The thing that’s missing in this narrative so much is that in hindsight the Inflation Reduction Act is not nearly as much of a climate savior as its proponents claim. Folks realized we need all this permitting, all this regulatory reform so we can actually build this stuff and a lot of what we were recognizing is that before the IRA passed, the private sector was going to fund a massive amount of new infrastructure, especially mature technologies. But you couldn’t get the stuff built. So the policy discussion a few years ago really should’ve focused on regulatory and permitting reform… and it prioritized subsidies mostly instead.
Okay. Moving on, folks in Trump’s orbit proffer in conspiracies and misinformation, disinformation about renewable energy – are you at all concerned about the next Trump administration turning against individual solar and wind projects in the permitting process based on those views?
Oh yeah. We’ve seen this getting done under the past several administrations — more polarization. A lot of stakeholders have called this the Keystonization of energy permitting. That’s really concerning.
I always think of presidents or any elected official as more followers to their political milieu than leaders in their own right. We started to see this with President Obama where some of his advisors and his team said, why does something like the Keystone XL matter that much? It doesn’t make or break that much… but you saw a lot of this technology and project tribalism really kicking in with different groups and that clearly influenced political decision-making. It started removing the permitting process from an objective criteria-based approach. It’s really concerning to see this trend move forward. And subsequently on both sides of the aisle you’ve seen this temptation, mostly with presidential administrations given their authorities, these [Council of Environmental Quality] processes or other things that might put their thumb on the scale in favor of some resources over others.
I would note the NEPA reforms that Trump got done on his watch. Those NEPA reforms were cheerleaded by the wind and solar industries. That’s when you started to see the environmental groups really oppose those NEPA reforms but the clean energy groups really wanted them.
That may be true, but activists fighting projects tell me they’re really excited for Trump. These activists believe this – as you put it – Keystonization is going to help them and we're going to see the Trump administration become a more difficult environment to get solar and wind permits on a case-by-case basis. Do you see that happening?
I would be worried if we started to see indications of that. It’s always possible.
Senator Jim Risch recently said he expects the Trump administration to issue a project-by-project executive order. Do you imagine anything in that world is possible?
It’s possible.
Where we’ve seen more of the red-blue divide is at the state level. That’s our biggest concern… oof. That’s been trending in the wrong direction really severely in recent years. That might be the single biggest long-term hindrance to energy infrastructure development and by extension decarbonization. That issue set is really tough. And that unfortunately you’ve seen some of the fault lines–
–Sorry to interrupt. Do you mean the blue states trying to overrule local control versus the red states letting localities have the final say, like Ohio?
Yeah. And some of that can be philosophical, irrespective of the technology. Some of it is home rule versus state government. That is a factor in it.
But going back to some of the misinformation and disinformation stuff… that’s been concerning.
When we’ve surveyed a lot of these developers and asked what is motivating some of this right now? So much of it is Facebook campaigns that were promoting false perspectives on the consequences of infrastructure development. Things like the flicker effect from living near wind turbines causing health effects. A lot of stuff on electro-magnetic fields. There was just a lot of bad information out there. That has generated in some cases opposition from communities that is misguided and unfortunate.
One of our big recommendations with this is we learned a lot from the Telecommunications Act in the ‘90s. Whether Congress pursues something similar for energy infrastructure, I don’t know. But maybe at the state level at least we should have this conversation where you need to actually demonstrate harm if you actually have legitimate concerns about health effects. [It’s] that standing and criteria-based determination approach to this, rather than this sentiment based approach that could be based on utter nonsense.
Is there a federal solution to this problem?
In permitting, we’ve had this conversation for a while now about community engagement – which progressives call for – and judicial review, which is something conservatives have been calling for. I think there’s actually some reinforcing and mutually beneficial reforms that can be done in tandem. Things like narrow standing to individuals and entities actually affected by the infrastructure, and that standing has to be tied to demonstrate harm under these statutes – that’s a piece that can be there.
But the other thing you do is come in with good information. You have standardized packets of information to help communities and siting bodies make more informed decisions. Alright, there can be the potential economic development benefits to your community. Oh also, we’re going to be honest about any kind of drawbacks – legitimate local health and ecosystem effects. You create a system that naturally filters out a bunch of nonsense and also drives in good information. Those concepts can be reinforced.
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The collateral damage from the Lava Ridge wind project might now include a proposed 285-mile transmission line initially approved by federal regulators in the 1990s.
The same movement that got Trump to kill the Lava Ridge wind farm Trump killed has appeared to derail a longstanding transmission project that’s supposed to connect sought-after areas for wind energy in Idaho to power-hungry places out West.
The Southwest Intertie Project-North, also known as SWIP-N, is a proposed 285-mile transmission line initially approved by federal regulators in the 1990s. If built, SWIP-N is supposed to feed power from the wind-swept plains of southern Idaho to the Southwest, while shooting electrons – at least some generated from solar power – back up north into Idaho from Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. In California, regulators have identified the line as crucial for getting cleaner wind energy into the state’s grid to meet climate goals.
But on Tuesday, SWIP-N suddenly faced a major setback: The three-person commission representing Jerome County, Idaho – directly in the path of the project – voted to revoke its special use permit, stating the company still lacked proper documentation to meet the terms and conditions of the approval. SWIP-N had the wind at its back as recently as last year, when LS Power expected it to connect to Lava Ridge and other wind farms that have been delayed by Trump’s federal permitting freeze on renewable energy. But now, the transmission line has stuttered along with this potential generation.
At a hearing Tuesday evening, county commissioners said Great Basin Transmission, a subsidiary of LS Power developing the line, would now suddenly need new input, including the blessing of the local highway district and potential feedback from the Federal Aviation Administration. Jerome County Commissioner Charles Howell explained to me Wednesday afternoon that there will still need to be formal steps remanding the permit, and the process will go back to local zoning officials. Great Basin Transmission will then at minimum need to get the sign-offs from local highway officials to satisfy his concerns, as well as those of the other commissioner who voted to rescind the permit, Ben Crouch.
The permit was many years old, and there are outstanding questions about what will happen next procedurally, including what Great Basin Transmission is actually able to do to fight this choice by the commissioners. At minimum, staff for the commission will write a formal decision explaining the reasoning and remand the permit. After that, it’ll be up to Great Basin Transmission to produce the documents that commissioners want. “Even our attorney and staff didn’t have those answers when we asked that after the vote,” Howell said, adding that he hopes the issues can be resolved. “I was on the county commission about when they decided where to site the towers, where to site the right-of-ways. That’s all been there a long time.”
This is the part where I bring up how Jerome County’s decision followed a months-long fight by aggrieved residents who opposed the SWIP-N line, including homeowners who say they didn’t know their properties were in the path of the project. There’s also a significant anti-wind undercurrent, as many who are fighting this transmission line previously fought LS Power’s Lava Ridge wind project, which was blocked by and executive order from President Donald Trump on his first day in office. Jerome County itself passed an ordinance in May requiring any renewable energy facility to get all federal, state, and local approvals before it would sign off on new projects.
Opposition to SWIP-N comes from a similar place as the “Stop Lava Ridge” campaign. Along with viewshed anxieties and property value impacts, SWIP-N, like Lava Ridge, would be within single-digit miles of the Minidoka National Historic Site, a former prison camp that held Japanese-Americans during World War II. In the eyes of its staunchest critics, constructing the wind farm would’ve completely damaged any impact of visiting the site by filling the surroundings of what is otherwise a serene, somber scene. Descendants of Minidoka detainees lobbied politicians at all levels to oppose Lava Ridge, a cause that was ultimately championed by Republican politicians in their fight against the project.
These same descendants of Japanese-American detainees have fought the transmission line, arguing that its construction would inevitably lead to new wind projects. “If approved, the SWIP-N line would enable LS Power and other renewable energy companies to build massive wind projects on federal land in and around Jerome County in future years,” wrote Dan Sakura, the son of a Minidoka prisoner, in a September 15 letter to the commission.
Sakura had been a leading voice in the fight against Lava Ridge. When I asked why he was weighing in on SWIP-N, he told me over text message, “The Lava Ridge wind project poisoned the well for renewable energy projects on federal land in Southern Idaho.”
LS Power did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s worth noting that efforts have already been made to avoid SWIP-N’s impacts to the Minidoka National Historic Site. In 2010, Congress required the Interior Secretary to re-do the review process for the transmission line, which at the time was proposed to go through the historic site. The route rejected by Jerome County would go around.
There is also no guarantee that wind energy will flock to southern Idaho any time soon. Yes, there’s a Trump permitting freeze, and federal wind energy tax credits are winding down. That’s almost certainly why the developers of small nuclear reactors have reportedly coveted the Lava Ridge site for future projects. But there’s also incredible hostility pent up against wind partially driven by the now-defunct LS Power project, for instance in Lincoln County, where officials now have an emergency moratorium banning wind energy while they develop a more permanent restrictive ordinance.
Howell made no bones about his own views on wind farms, telling me he prefers battery storage and nuclear power. “As I stand here in my backyard, if they put up windmills, that’s all I’m going to see for 40 miles,” he said
But Howell did confess to me that he thinks SWIP-N will ultimately be built – if the company is able to get these new sign-offs. What kind of energy flows through a transmission line cannot ultimately affect the decision on the special use permit because, he said, “there are rules.” On top of that, Idaho is going to ultimately need more power no matter what, and at the very least, the state will have to get electrons from elsewhere.
Howell’s “non-political” answer to the fate of SWIP-N, as he put it to me, is that “We live on power, so we gotta have more power.”
The week’s most important news around renewable project fights.
1. Western Nevada — The Esmeralda 7 solar mega-project may be no more.
2. Washoe County, Nevada – Elsewhere in Nevada, the Greenlink North transmission line has been delayed by at least another month.
3. Oconto County, Wisconsin – Solar farm town halls are now sometimes getting too scary for developers to show up at.
4. Apache County, Arizona – In brighter news, this county looks like it will give its first-ever conditional use permit for a large solar farm, EDF Renewables’ Juniper Spring project.
5. Putnam County, Indiana – After hearing about what happened here this week, I’m fearful for any solar developer trying to work in Indiana.
6. Tippecanoe County, Indiana – Two counties to the north of Putnam is a test case for the impacts a backlash on solar energy can have on data centers.
A conversation with Spencer Hanes of EnerVenue
Today’s conversation is with Spencer Hanes, vice president of international business development for long-duration battery firm EnerVenue and a veteran in clean energy infrastructure development. I reached out to Hanes for two reasons: One, I wanted to gab about solutions, for once, and also because he expressed an interest in discussing how data center companies are approaching the media-driven battery safety panic sweeping renewable energy development. EnerVenue doesn’t use lithium-ion batteries – it uses metal-hydrogen, which Hanes told me may have a much lower risk of thermal runaway (a.k.a. unstoppable fire).
I really appreciated our conversation because, well, it left me feeling like battery alternatives might become an easy way for folks to dodge the fire freakout permeating headlines and local government hearing rooms.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
From a developer’s perspective, if you’re working in utility-scale battery development, why ditch lithium-ion batteries?
My first battery project was at Duke Energy in 2010. It was a lead-acid battery project in Texas. It was the first time we’d incorporated batteries into a renewables project, and it was probably the biggest in the northern hemisphere. Now I don’t even think it is the biggest in Texas, but it was a big step forward.
What developers are finding is that lithium batteries don’t last as long as the developers would like them to. That means they’ve got a shelf life of 7,000 cycles, maybe 8,000 cycles, and it depends on how you use them – lithium ion batteries have to perform under the perfect environment or they can be damaged. Our batteries, on the other hand, are incredibly flexible, and we have a much more robust product that we think is safer and longer lasting than lithium – which has its place, but there are more and more safety issues around it. [There’s] virtually no risk of thermal runaway with our battery.
So I recently had a lithium-ion battery explode on me for the first time – it sparked up and fused to an electrical cable. It was very surprising, and as someone who writes about this stuff a lot, it still took me aback. As someone who is interacting with folks in data center development spaces, seeking battery storage for their operations, how are they digesting the anxieties around battery failures?
Well, the good news is that the data center developers are just trying to get electrons where they can find them. It's hard to find any sort of generation resource right now. Solar and batteries are just the easiest to find.
The safety piece is always going to be top of mind, though. They’re going to build redundancies into their battery projects, wall them off and containerize different batteries so if there’s a spark it doesn’t propagate.
Because data centers need electrons quickly right now, these companies are immune to the battery safety anxieties percolating in the public right now?
Yeah. They’ve been using them for a long time, they’re familiar with them. But the data centers and the big power users are sometimes stressing the lithium-ion batteries in ways they can no longer handle.
Do you feel like data center companies, big power users, do they get the inherent risks from a social license perspective and a siting perspective in using big lithium-ion batteries?
I think a lot of battery projects are being developed in containers because of fire issues, so if there is an issue it’s contained, and that’s a best practice right now.
What would be better is if there was a zero risk of thermal runaway. I think there’s a growing need for other technologies to come along that are safer and more utility-grade, able to serve multiple purposes. But the data center companies are very smart about how they’re developing, and they’re not going to do it in a way that creates problems for other parts of the data center.
Are there ways to avoid building out a lot of batteries? Maybe minimizing how many batteries are used on site, or how much infrastructure needs to be put on site to minimize fire risk?
I think unfortunately it's largely a case by case determination in where you are. I’m running across more and more engineering firms that aren’t comfortable with even the safest batteries being inside a building. Now, everyone wants them containerized because a thermal runaway event is a catastrophic risk no one wants to take.
EnerVenue has a product that fits that profile. There are many others that fit that profile, as well. We need many more options of technologies that can fit the bill. Lithium has a really important role in our society, doing well enough in phones and laptops, but we think we have a competitive offering for grid scale energy storage.
From your vantage point, do you see data center development as the growth area for storage in the U.S. right now?
A year ago I’d get a call once a quarter, and now I’m fielding calls every month. It's because there’s such a crunch on generation. If you put a battery with a data center … everybody wants to say the centers are operating 99.9% of the time, but they’re also not operating at 100% capacity all day, so if they can generate electricity and store it in a battery to use when rates are cheaper or when there’s a constraint on the grid, that’s a benefit to them.