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How the litigious environmental organization squares its opposition to some renewable energy projects with its support for rapid climate action
Welcome to The Fight’s Q&A section where we’ll speak with the movers and shakers shaping every side of the debate over renewable energy deployment.
Today our subject is Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmentalist organization at times on the plaintiff end of lawsuits against projects. I decided to speak with him about how his organization’s opposition to some projects squares with its support for rapid climate action.
The following is an abridged version of our conversation.
What would you say to someone who says the work you do is delaying climate action?
There’s a huge amount of projects in the pipeline, and it’s not likely that our level of intervention is going to materially affect the overall rollout of clean energy.
We [the U.S.] aren’t picking the right projects to pursue. No plan exists in the federal government for where that energy is going to come from, where we’re going to pick which projects to permit. And we have no filtering criteria for which to say, well, this is a good project and there’s so many problems with this project that it’s a really bad project and we shouldn’t permit.
Why do you think the government isn’t engaging organizations like CBD about which projects to pursue?
It’s not a legal obligation. It’s probably a moral obligation. If you’re going to go to 50% EVs or whatever, you better have a plan for where all the lithium is going to come from! There’s places with lower tribal conflicts, these are knowable things. We can do it next week. We also need to consolidate solar projects. There are millions of acres that don’t have tortoises on them. We have more than enough land. I could just pencil that out right now – it’s not that hard to find the least conflicts. The data exists.
But again, industry’s been in the driver’s seat. Industry’s said, we have this application and it needs to be processed because we brought it in.
So what you’re saying is, you’d sit with Jigar Shah and just plan it out?
If he asked me to come, I’d be in D.C. tomorrow. Absolutely. That’s what we want — let’s plan it out, and then I can go work on other things, y’know? I’d be happy to sue over that [other] stuff.
Absent this planning, which sounds nice but has not happened, proponents of permitting reform often cite CBD’s repeated opposition as a reason to pass legislation that could limit your ability to challenge projects. What do you think about how your actions now could impact your capacity to act in the future?
I think some level of permitting reform was inevitable. I don’t think anything in the permitting bill will cease our efforts. It will make it harder for sure. I think the biggest thing it will do is eliminate the ability for frontline communities to engage, so we’re looking at an undemocratic clean energy transition where you have technocrats making decisions for how people’s lives will play out. People in these rural communities feel like they’re under assault. Low income desert folks feel like their whole life is going to be turned upside down.
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Almost half of developers believe it is “somewhat or significantly harder to do” projects on farmland, despite the clear advantages that kind of property has for harnessing solar power.
The solar energy industry has a big farm problem cropping up. And if it isn’t careful, it’ll be dealing with it for years to come.
Researchers at SI2, an independent research arm of the Solar Energy Industries Association, released a study of farm workers and solar developers this morning that said almost half of all developers believe it is “somewhat or significantly harder to do” projects on farmland, despite the clear advantages that kind of property has for harnessing solar power.
Unveiled in conjunction with RE+, the largest renewable energy conference in the U.S., the federally-funded research includes a warning sign that permitting is far and away the single largest impediment for solar developers trying to build projects on farmland. If this trend continues or metastasizes into a national movement, it could indefinitely lock developers out from some of the nation’s best land for generating carbon-free electricity.
“If a significant minority opposes and perhaps leads to additional moratoria, [developers] will lose a foot in the door for any future projects,” Shawn Rumery, SI2’s senior program director and the survey lead, told me. “They may not have access to that community any more because that moratoria is in place.”
SI2’s research comes on the heels of similar findings from Heatmap Pro. A poll conducted for the platform last month found 70% of respondents who had more than 50 acres of property — i.e. the kinds of large landowners sought after by energy developers — are concerned that renewable energy “takes up farmland,” by far the greatest objection among that cohort.
Good farmland is theoretically perfect for building solar farms. What could be better for powering homes than the same strong sunlight that helps grow fields of yummy corn, beans and vegetables? And there’s a clear financial incentive for farmers to get in on the solar industry, not just because of the potential cash in letting developers use their acres but also the longer-term risks climate change and extreme weather can pose to agriculture writ large.
But not all farmers are warming up to solar power, leading towns and counties across the country to enact moratoria restricting or banning solar and wind development on and near “prime farmland.” Meanwhile at the federal level, Republicans and Democrats alike are voicing concern about taking farmland for crop production to generate renewable energy.
Seeking to best understand this phenomena, SI2 put out a call out for ag industry representatives and solar developers to tell them how they feel about these two industries co-mingling. They received 355 responses of varying detail over roughly three months earlier this year, including 163 responses from agriculture workers, 170 from solar developers as well as almost two dozen individuals in the utility sector.
A key hurdle to development, per the survey, is local opposition in farm communities. SI2’s publicity announcement for the research focuses on a hopeful statistic: up to 70% of farmers surveyed said they were “open to large-scale solar.” But for many, that was only under certain conditions that allow for dual usage of the land or agrivoltaics. In other words, they’d want to be able to keep raising livestock, a practice known as solar grazing, or planting crops unimpeded by the solar panels.
The remaining percentage of farmers surveyed “consistently opposed large-scale solar under any condition,” the survey found.
“Some of the messages we got were over my dead body,” Rumery said.
Meanwhile a “non-trivial” number of solar developers reported being unwilling or disinterested in adopting the solar-ag overlap that farmers want due to the increased cost, Rumery said. While some companies expect large portions of their business to be on farmland in the future, and many who responded to the survey expect to use agrivoltaic designs, Rumery voiced concern at the percentage of companies unwilling to integrate simultaneous agrarian activities into their planning.
In fact, Rumery said some developers’ reticence is part of what drove him and his colleagues to release the survey while at RE+.
As we discussed last week, failing to address the concerns of local communities can lead to unintended consequences with industry-wide ramifications. Rumery said developers trying to build on farmland should consider adopting dual-use strategies and focus on community engagement and education to avoid triggering future moratoria.
“One of the open-ended responses that best encapsulated the problem was a developer who said until the cost of permitting is so high that it forces us to do this, we’re going to continue to develop projects as they are,” he said. “That’s a cold way to look at it.”
Meanwhile, who is driving opposition to solar and other projects on farmland? Are many small farm owners in rural communities really against renewables? Is the fossil fuel lobby colluding with Big Ag? Could building these projects on fertile soil really impede future prospects at crop yields?
These are big questions we’ll be tackling in far more depth in next week’s edition of The Fight. Trust me, the answers will surprise you.
Here are the most notable renewable energy conflicts over the past week.
1. Worcester County, Maryland –Ocean City is preparing to go to court “if necessary” to undo the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval last week of U.S. Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project, town mayor Rick Meehan told me in a statement this week.
2. Magic Valley, Idaho – The Lava Ridge Wind Project would be Idaho’s biggest wind farm. But it’s facing public outcry over the impacts it could have on a historic site for remembering the impact of World War II on Japanese residents in the United States.
3. Kossuth County, Iowa – Iowa’s largest county – Kossuth – is in the process of approving a nine-month moratorium on large-scale solar development.
Here’s a few more hotspots I’m watching…
The most important renewable energy policies and decisions from the last few days.
Greenlink’s good day – The Interior Department has approved NV Energy’s Greenlink West power line in Nevada, a massive step forward for the Biden administration’s pursuit of more transmission.
States’ offshore muddle – We saw a lot of state-level offshore wind movement this past week… and it wasn’t entirely positive. All of this bodes poorly for odds of a kumbaya political moment to the industry’s benefit any time soon.
Chumash loophole – Offshore wind did notch one win in northern California by securing an industry exception in a large marine sanctuary, providing for farms to be built in a corridor of the coastline.
Here’s what else I’m watching …