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Q&A

The Center for Biological Diversity’s Patrick Donnelly Responds to Critics

How the litigious environmental organization squares its opposition to some renewable energy projects with its support for rapid climate action

Patrick Donnelly.
Heatmap Illustration/Center for Biological Diversity

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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Q&A

How the Wind Industry Can Fight Back

A conversation with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications

The Q&A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”

Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.

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Hotspots

A New York Town Bans Both Renewable Energy And Data Centers

And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.

  • Chautauqua, a vacation town in southern New York, has now reportedly issued a one-year moratorium on wind projects – though it’s not entirely obvious whether a wind project is in active development within its boundaries, and town officials have confessed none are being planned as of now.
  • Apparently, per local press, this temporary ban is tied to a broader effort to update the town’s overall land use plan to “manage renewable energy and other emerging high-impact uses” – and will lead to an ordinance that restricts data centers as well as solar and wind projects.
  • I anticipate this strategy where towns update land use plans to target data centers and renewables at the same time will be a lasting trend.

2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.

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Spotlight

The Wind Projects Breaking the Wyoming GOP

It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.

At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.

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