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A conversation with Geoff Cooper, head of the Renewable Fuels Association
Today’s conversation is with Geoff Cooper, head of the Renewable Fuels Association, the most powerful biofuels trade organization in D.C. And he’s not happy.
In Cooper’s view, the Biden administration left the IRA’s tax credit supporting lower-carbon jet fuel unfinished despite releasing guidance days before Trump entered office (here’s an explainer on that problem). Not to mention the chaos of Trump’s early days has, as Cooper put it, thrown the brakes on the American biofuels sector’s foray into aviation. Cooper and I have a history going back years, and almost a month into Trump 2.0, I thought it was time we had a chat about how solar and wind aren’t the only sectors left out in the cold right now.
The following conversation was lightly edited and abridged for clarity.
We’ve been telling our readers what’s happening in the renewable energy space under Trump. But what’s happening in the renewable fuels space?
I think what we’re seeing right now is lots of businesses hitting the pause button and waiting for more certainty, waiting for more clarity on where everything is headed. There is, of course, always uncertainty and unpredictability at the beginning of any new administration. But this one in particular there has been more than usual because we were sort of in the middle of getting rules finalized on some of those key tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act. We had good clarity, and I’d say understanding of where some of those programs were going, like 45Q, but on others like 45Z, literally, it was the last week of the Biden administration that we began to see the necessary pieces of that program we’d been waiting on, and what the administration put out was incomplete and unfinished, so now it falls to the Trump administration to decide whether and how to move forward with that. So all of that uncertainty and confusion and the timing of all of that has resulted in many companies in the renewable fuels space just calling a time out on any investment plans and strategies that they have been considering to lower carbon intensity. I think there’s a real hesitancy to dive head first into some of those investments right now when it just isn’t clear where the bottom is.
What do you mean by a pause on investment? Can you give some examples?
Under 45Z and under the initial modeling the Biden administration put out in early January, I’d say probably three-quarters of the ethanol industry is just barely on the outside of generating 45Z credit, so the carbon intensity of their ethanol is just above that threshold that would be required to generate that credit on the low end of that scale.
There are a number of technologies that producers could adopt to get them on the other side of that threshold into the position where they can begin claiming some value from 45Z — combined heat and power, installing wind or solar behind the meter at these facilities so they can enjoy the benefit of renewable electricity, using biogas in lieu of natural gas. These are all things most producers were considering, and had in some cases had deals ready to go and projects ready to go. But they’re on hold now because again, nobody’s quite sure what the future looks like for 45Z.
Are any companies saying this out loud, or is this mostly private board room chatter?
This is mostly internal conversations during board meetings and other meetings we’ve had as an association. But there have been public statements.
Is the uncertainty surrounding government funding also a factor here?
It has been. If you look at USDA — for example, the [Rural Energy for America Program] REAP program — funding was paused for that program. And it isn’t just for on-farm renewable projects. There’s some ethanol plants that had successfully applied and received commitments for REAP funding for projects they were doing and that’s been put on hold. More broadly, things have slowed down in terms of making investments and commitments to efficiency and lower carbon intensity in the industry as a result of just the broader freeze and slowdown on all of these programs at the federal level.
And again, you expect some of that is going to occur any time there’s a new administration and you go through a transition like this. But this one has been, I would say, particularly acute so far.
Do you believe that given his history supporting biofuel infrastructure in North Dakota as governor, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum will be more deferential to your members when it comes to permitting?
I should say the industry is confident that everything that’s paused right now — or, not everything, but a lot of the important programs that have been frozen or paused right now — will eventually be unstuck and the door will open back up. Certainly we see carbon capture and sequestration projects in that way, permitting for those projects. Obviously there’s a couple of carbon pipeline projects that we do expect will move forward, and the 45Q tax credit seems to be on firmer ground than 45Z at this moment. So we do expect that those things will move forward.
It’s just a matter of how long things are delayed and how long things are frozen as the new administration is reviewing things and formulating their own strategy and plans for how they want to move forward.
Do you have any idea how that’ll shake out?
I don’t think there is any indication of how it’ll shake out at this point.
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Rockland Solar accuses East Fairfield, Pennsylvania, of “municipal extortion.”
A solar developer is accusing a Pennsylvania town of requesting a $150 million bribe to get its permits, calling it “municipal extortion.”
Rockland Solar – a subsidiary of utility-scale solar developer Birch Creek – filed a federal lawsuit last week accusing officials in the northern Pennsylvania township of East Fairfield of intentionally moving the goalposts for getting permits to build over the span of multiple years. Rockland’s attorneys in the litigation describe the four officials controlling the township’s board of supervisors as engaging in “corrupt” behavior to deny the project, “ultimately culminating in the solicitation of a bride of more than $150,000,000” in exchange for approval of its application to develop land in the township.
The federal complaint scans as a horror story in solar development. Applications for Rockland Solar’s project were first filed in 2021 and granted approval from the township’s zoning officials in 2022, per the company’s legal complaint. But things seem to have gone south when Rockland Solar sought approval of its first land use application from the town, as replies to emails from town officials became scattershot and sporadic.
In August 2024, per the lawsuit, East Fairfield officials scheduled a crucial public meeting to decide whether to approve the application without notifying Rockland Solar itself, which the company claims was an intentional move “in corrupt and underhanded bad faith” meant “to consider, and then deny” the application “without providing due process.” According to the lawsuit, one of the reasons for the denial was that the project was located within the township – despite it already being approved by zoning officials.
Rockland Solar then took the town to Pennsylvania claims court over the decision because it was reached after a statutory deadline, according to the lawsuit. Amidst this legal fight, the company submitted a second application to build the project – making what the company says were many size and setback changes intended to address the reasons for the apparent denial. East Fairfield ultimately denied the project again. But the developer kept trying, negotiating in apparent good faith with the town’s lawyers to try and reach an agreement.
Then came the alleged request for a bribe. Per a letter cited in the legal complaint, officials asked the developer to pay the town annual payments every year the project was operating – starting at $5,000 and then increasing 25% “every year for the life of the facility,” and that land owners bordering the property would also need to be “compensated 10% of their current property value.” Rockland Solar’s attorneys calculated the annual payments alone to total at least $3 million in the thirtieth year of the project and $30 million a decade later.
Altogether, Rockland Solar’s attorneys landed on the whopping $150 million figure, stipulating that this figure doesn’t include the payments to neighboring property owners. The company argues that this “solicitation of money by a township commissioner to a developer” in exchange for “favorable treatment of a land use application” violated the state bribery statute.
I’ve seen a lot of conflict writing The Fight – including lots of lawsuits filed by developers and residents alike – but I’d never seen an escalation this profound. Normally, suing the town you’re building a project in is a bad idea because it can spoil the well of public trust. I can’t help but think this maneuver was a last resort for Rockland Solar.
It’s also quite rare to get an inside look at the negotiations between a developer and a town. We’re used to seeing community benefit agreements and compacts come and go and I’ve told you how those deals have mixed results. Rockland Solar is now a case study in perhaps one of the worst ways those talks can end up.
I reached out to Rockland Solar’s attorneys, as well as Birch Creek, but failed to hear back. I also tried to reach officials in East Fairfield to hear their take on these extraordinary claims, but no dice. Here’s hoping that writing this leads to them reaching out as well, because this is fascinating and I want to learn more for all of you!
And more of the week’s top news in renewable energy fights.
1. Waldo County, Maine – The Republican-led bid to stop an offshore wind industrial site on Sears Island has failed.
2. Atlantic County, N.J. – We’re expecting a decision any minute now in the fight over EPA’s decision to rescind a crucial air permit for the Atlantic Shores’ offshore wind project.
3. Worcester County, Maryland – This may surprise you but the Trump administration’s Justice Department argued against opponents of offshore wind.
4. Wake County, North Carolina – Legislators in Tar Heel County are considering a bill to remove solar tax credits for projects on farmland.
5. Lawrence County, Alabama – It looks like at least one solar project in Alabama could get the Trump administration’s blessing.
6. Jay County, Indiana – We have a new place to watch for a renewable energy moratorium, folks.
7. Renville County, Minnesota – A 200-megawatt Ranger Solar project is nearing final permits from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.
8. Whitman County, Washington – Steelhead Americas is giving up on getting permission from county leaders and going straight to the state for its Harvest Hills wind project.
9. Apache County, Arizona – Officials in this county are working on a draft renewable energy ordinance with “preferred area[s] that’ll be reviewed as soon as next month, according to one local report.
A conversation with Rebecca Barel and Dan Cassata of Columbia
This week’s Q&A is a change of pace. I was contacted by two student researchers – Rebecca Barel and Dan Cassata – requesting to interview me for some policy and social science research they’ve been up to at Columbia University sponsored by the policy organization Clean Tomorrow.
Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: Wouldn’t it be neat if I interviewed academics engaging in this research about their experience doing this work in such a hostile political environment?
So I asked Rebecca and Dan if our conversation could wind up being a bit of a dialogue, instead of something one-sided. Much to my satisfaction, they agreed – and I wound up getting a lot more hopeful by the end of our talk than I was when it started.
Anywho, the following chat has been edited for clarity. Let’s take it away?
Tell me about your research project, first and foremost.
Dan: The project writ large, the central idea of it is there’s this suite of either policy or non-policy mechanisms we can use to take benefits that accrue from a renewables project and deliver them to a local community, as opposed to let’s say an extractive model. The project is trying to understand what that suite of tools look like and to what extent any of those tools have an influence on public opinion. You’ve done a lot of reporting on community backlash, community opposition. We’re trying to understand how much of this opposition is coming from this view: benefits aren’t coming to us, so why should we support this?
It feels like we can actually add value here. Sometimes when you do grad school research, you’re just putting stuff on paper to get a degree and not doing anything meaningful.
I wanted to talk about this with you because I love conversations with those who, like myself, are obsessed with this niche issue. Can you tell me more about the experience of researching conflicts in renewable energy development right now, amid the war on climate action and renewable energy generally? How does it feel to be doing this research at this time?
Rebecca: I can take that – I mean, in California specifically, one of the mechanisms was that the offshore wind leases are required to have community benefit agreements and a labor agreement. I had an interview with someone who’d written about this topic yesterday who said, quick question – where do you see this going? What’s happening now that Trump is so anti-offshore wind? And I said, That’s what I was going to ask you. Most of my research is at this point coming from Heatmap, because most of the mainstream news outlets aren’t concerned with these issues. They’re bogged down with the visa situations, and being at Columbia is an interesting experience right now.
Dan: Rebecca touched on this but to be more explicit – it is entirely up to the state governments. We’re not looking at the federal policies. That’s not to say there aren’t uncertainties that come with that, and federal incentives obviously matter. Whether or not a project is going to pencil depends on federal incentives. But focusing on the state level has created more of a lane where our work can still feel relevant and be completely overturned and what not.
I’d ask you, Jael – are they more or less confident about opposing projects now that Trump’s in office?
Maybe. There’s certainly some degree of emboldened opposition. I see that as a journalist and I wonder what place there is for the research you’re doing – I wonder how it will be used.
Dan: The dimensions on which some of this is happening is separate from the politics, and that’s a note of optimism from me I guess. You can structure things and it might not be as uniform and widespread as you would like but there are places where you can work and be effective.
Rebecca: I’d add the renewable energy debate, there’s a broader question of what will win out in America over the next few years. Money in pocket or charismatic propaganda that motivates how people vote and what people choose to back. I think we’re at a crux in that right now because of the tariffs but in Texas, generally, if you were to put the people in that area into a box – they might have MAGA hats but at the end of the day, they’re about the money in their pocket. That’s how we ordinarily think of American voters.
I feel like money in my pocket might win, but it’s going to take a while.
How much interest in your work have you seen from the private sector or public officials?
Dan: We’ve spoken to public commissioners at the county level. I had a call right before this conversation with someone from a state-level public service commission. Everyone gets back to us. I do think the private sector has been less engaged. I don’t know if that’s less of an interest though – I read it as the private sector not tending to talk about their work with folks like us very often. There’s not that much in it for them.
Dan: I’d like to ask you this Jael – does it feel like community engagement is a meaningful thing?
This edition of the newsletter will begin with a company accusing a township of soliciting a bribe after years of moving goalposts and redlines. I’m not that optimistic.
Where do you see policy being a solution in this circumstance?
Dan: Let’s take as a given that community benefit agreements work. The research – and what we’ve found – is that that’s not really a given. But they can work. And there are states like New York and California that have legislation that heavily incentivizes developers to go through this process of community engagement to qualify for tax credits or get permits. The reason that we are doing this research is because if you were able to have a case that this is really effective at improving projects and the speed of getting buy-in – we’d argue in our [eventual] report that this type of legislation should become more widespread.
If the conclusion is these things don’t seem to be impactful, then that’s where it justifies the case to look at this other suite of mechanisms that might be more helpful. For projects of a certain size, in New York for example, you can circumvent local zoning regulations and go through a state approval process.
The last thing I’ll ask: what gives you hope at this moment?
Dan: There’s obviously a lot of things that are going poorly right now when it comes to policy at the federal level on the energy transition. But I just think the ship has sailed – the boat might take longer to get there but the ship has left the port, and renewables are cost competitive if not cheaper than fossil energy.
Rebecca: There are people trying to do bad things and bad faith actors in power, but there are a lot of people trying really hard to make things better, and as long as there are people trying – there is a chance. It might take longer, and we might be slowed down, but for me what brings me hope is that every conversation I have with someone smart and capable and actively doing something to improve the environment, we’re not done yet.