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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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A renewables fight in Arizona turns ugly.
Autumn Johnson told me some days it feels like she’s shouting into a void.
Johnson is the executive director for the Arizona branch of the Solar Energy Industries Association, the nation’s pre-eminent solar power trade group. Lately, she told me, she’s seeing an increasing number of communities go after potential solar farms, many of them places with little or no previous solar development. There’s so many she’s had to start “tracking them on a spreadsheet,” she tells me, then proceeding to rattle off the names of counties and towns like battles in a war. Heatmap Pro data reveals how restricted Arizona is today, with six out of the state’s 15 counties showing a restrictive ordinance on solar and/or wind energy.
One of those battles: Chino Valley, a small town in northern Arizona. For two years, Johnson and others in the solar industry worked to try and massage the town into enacting restrictions on solar that wouldn’t all but ban the industry. But a town council meeting in mid-March turned ugly, as a debate over the restrictions ultimately devolved to heckling and hollering. “I’m surprised they didn’t throw things,” she recalled to me over the phone.
Playing back tape of that meeting, I watched as anyone who even spoke up in favor of solar was booed. When Johnson got up to speak and say SEIA recommended a smaller setback than drafted – 150 feet – audience members loudly laughed at her. Ultimately she was interrupted so many times that her time to speak expired before she finished her comments.
She asked the Chino Valley town council: “Could I finish my thought since I had to stop several times?” BOO! The audience wasn’t having it. And neither was the town council, who declined to let her continue.
After another hour-plus of testimony, the town council was swayed: Chino Valley dropped the regulation their staff spent years on and instead instructed them to draft a complete ban on all solar – as well as battery storage and wind farms.
If enacted, this regulation would all but doom Draconis, a large-scale utility solar farm proposed by bp in Chino Valley. A bp representative briefly testified at the town council meeting to say members of the public who’d previously spoken had mischaracterized the water usage required for the solar farm, but was booed off the microphone. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Johnson told me Arizonans in many pockets of the state are starting to turn on solar for two major reasons. One: There’s a partisan affiliation with renewables and climate change due to the Inflation Reduction Act and Joe Biden’s involvement in crafting the law. The other motivation? “Part of it is old school NIMBYism,” Johnson told me. “We’re acting like this is a new thing but NIMBYism is not new. Everybody wants electricity but nobody wants the infrastructure that is necessary to facilitate their use of electricity.”
She added: “The way things are moving, the number of cities and counties that have restrictions is going to be more and more.” While some communities may be accepting utility-scale development now, she is concerned they’ll hit a “saturation point where people start to build up some kind of resentment about the quantity of projects.”
“It’s domino-y,” Johnson confessed.
I’m no Arizonan. But to me, what’s happening in Arizona is essentially one big redux of an infamous prank TV segment from the show “Who Is America?” in which actor Sasha Baron Cohen plays a coastal liberal stereotype posing as an economic development entrepreneur.
Cohen’s character visits Kingman, Arizona, a town northwest of Chino Valley. In that prank, Cohen walked Kingman residents through a presentation about a promising new source of tax revenue and local employment, only to reveal… he’s talking about building a mosque in Kingman funded by the Clinton Foundation.
Kingman is in Mohave County, which happened to be the first county Johnson mentioned when we spoke. Mohave – represented in Congress by far-right Republican Paul Gosar – is one of the sunniest parts of the country, smack dab in the Mohave Desert. It’s also one of the counties with a restrictive ordinance that routinely rejects solar farms, despite a willingness among local officials to approve new fossil energy. Why? Well, in the view of some folks out there, you might as well be building a Hillary Clinton-branded mosque. Not to mention Mohave has quite a few telltale signs of being tough to develop, according to Heatmap Pro – it’s an extremely white county with an economy heavily dependent on tourism and agriculture, making land use and property value pronounced day-to-day concerns.
Stan Barnes, a lobbyist in Arizona who represents large-scale solar developers, told me that for “so long, renewable energy has been tightly embraced – even bearhugged – by the center-left side of the political spectrum.” Barnes said this fact alone has made it much harder to build in rural areas of Arizona that voted heavily for Donald Trump. “The center-right side of the political spectrum feels like it needs to resist.”
Developers are finding ways around this sticky wicket, Barnes said, but it requires being “wise” and “a certain degree of authenticity on the ground with local officials.” He noted the Palo Verde energy hub, a federally-designated energy and transmission project area in a mostly remote area that expands off of an existing power plant. Barnes also mentioned Mohave, where utility-scale solar is not banned outright but restricted to light industrial areas, as a place where development is still possible.
“There likely will not be that kind of development in Chino Valley and that’s the way it’s going to be in some jurisdictions," he said. “In other jurisdictions there’s going to be thoughtful ordinances that accommodate a variety of interests.”
And more of the week’s top renewable energy fights.
1. Long Island, New York – We begin today with a crucial stand-off for the future of energy off the coast of New York City: Rep. Chris Smith – one of the loudest anti-wind voices in Congress – is asking the Trump administration to shut down active work on the Empire Wind project.
2. Gulf of Maine – American floating offshore wind is now taking one more step backwards, as Mitsubishi pulls out of the test arrays it was working on under Biden with researchers at the University of Maine.
3. Nantucket County, Massachusetts – Speaking of bad wind news, the town of Nantucket has sued to block the SouthCoast offshore wind project.
4. Washington County, Rhode Island – If you want a small piece of good news for offshore wind, the primary lawsuit against Revolution Wind’s environmental review suffered a major setback this week.
5. Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania – In another piece of good news, Scranton, Pennsylvania, approved the city’s first solar project, despite nearby residents speaking in opposition to it.
6. Carroll County, Arkansas – Less positive solar news: they’re banning solar and wind in the Ozarks.
7. Noble County, Indiana – Landowners opposed to plans for a Geenex solar farm are escalating their war on the project to a lawsuit against their board of supervisors, alleging conflicts of interest around solar decisionmaking.
8. Olmstead County, Minnesota – It seems local control won’t win the day over a Ranger Power utility-scale solar project in the Gopher State.
9. Van Zandt County, Texas – A Texas County is issuing a stop work order on a Taaleri Energia battery project alleging it is violating the local fire safety code.
10. Sacramento County, California – A D.E. Shaw Renewables utility-scale project is taking one step forward after a local planning council recommended county officials give it the green light.
11. Shasta County, California – Elsewhere in California, ecological concerns about renewables are winning out over the pace of decarbonization.
12. Ada County, Idaho – We conclude today’s hotspots with, as Jon Stewart likes to say, a ‘Moment of Zen’: the city of Boise is rejecting a challenge to battery storage development.
A conversation with Dustin Mulvaney, professor of environmental studies at San Jose State University
Today’s conversation is with Dustin Mulvaney, an environmental studies professor at San Jose State University. Mulvaney is a social scientist who spent much of his time before January 2025 advocating for more considerate and humane renewable energy development. Then Moss Landing happened. Mulvaney – who was there at Moss Landing the first day – is now obsessed with the myriad safety concerns laden in large-scale utility battery storage and what plans were in place to deal with the fire. His reasoning? A failure to grapple with safety concerns could undermine public trust in battery storage and make a transition away from fossil fuels more difficult.
The following is an abridged version of our conversation, which was the interview that first prompted me to investigate the mystery of the health concerns surrounding the fire.
Why are you so concerned about what safety plan was in place before the Moss Landing battery fire?
Three o’clock was when the battery started smoking. The giant fire doesn’t happen until six o’clock and there were reporters on scene saying, the smoke’s gone. Then all of the sudden: boom. Just blows up, big time.
They didn’t evacuate the neighborhood until six. The neighborhood should’ve been evacuated at three when the smoke started.
Wait – they didn’t evacuate the neighborhood until three hours after the fire?
It depends what you mean by fire. There weren’t flames the first few hours. From the planning side, they should’ve at least been notified they would be evacuated if the fire got worse.
That’s part of the problem. You’ve got all these people looking around at this gigantic fire and that’s scary. And on the monitoring part, there should be a plan for how to monitor the fire. How come no one flew a drone into the cloud of smoke to look for whatever’s in there to just get a sense? And they were checking for hydrofluoric acid all around but they were all at ground level. It just feels like they weren’t prepared.
Why does it concern you that they were only checking for that chemical at ground level?
We had an inversion that night and when we get a little inversion off the bay, the air is really clean and clear. I got pretty close to the fire that night. I got as close as the police would let me go. And I was breathing clean air at ground level. I want to say I was a mile away.
So what do you think was most missing from a regulatory standpoint here? What should’ve been done that wasn’t done at a state level?
If you think about it, the pipeline explosion killed all those people in San Bruno before the California Public Utilities Commission said maybe we should regulate pipelines a little better, and then burned down cities with hooks that were 100 years old from power lines and [said] maybe we should do something better on power lines. To me it feels like the CPUC is the one who has been dragging their feet on all of this.
Because they’re behind on planning?
The CPUC is in charge of safety. It’s part of CPUC’s job to make sure that pipelines don’t explode and transmission lines don’t catch fire.
I agree that we need to be safer, but there’s some pretty serious urgency to build a lot more of these batteries, fast, no?
So, the analogy that I was trying to go with was that when CPUC doesn’t do its job, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has threatened to come in. When pipeline explosions happen and if CPUC doesn’t do its job–
So do you want a Trump administration FERC to step in?
Absolutely not, that is not what I am saying. I’m not advocating for that. No way.
It’s the question of where is everybody? The CPUC should’ve stepped in and implemented regulations immediately. Maybe we’d see something different here. Maybe someone goes in and inspects that battery facility and sees we need corrugated metal from Home Depot.
This is going to get worse. I’m sure if there’s anybody with battery storage in a building like Moss Landing they are now being asked, I’m sure their insurers are asking, where’s your thermal runaway certification for that facility?