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Inside a wild race sparked by a solar farm in Knox County, Ohio.
The most important climate election you’ve never heard of? Your local county commissioner.
County commissioners are usually the most powerful governing individuals in a county government. As officials closer to community-level planning than, say a sitting senator, commissioners wind up on the frontlines of grassroots opposition to renewables. And increasingly, property owners that may be personally impacted by solar or wind farms in their backyards are gunning for county commissioner positions on explicitly anti-development platforms.
Take the case of newly-elected Ohio county commissioner – and Christian social media lifestyle influencer – Drenda Keesee.
In March, Keesee beat fellow Republican Thom Collier in a primary to become a GOP nominee for a commissioner seat in Knox County, Ohio. Knox, a ruby red area with very few Democratic voters, is one of the hottest battlegrounds in the war over solar energy on prime farmland and one of the riskiest counties in the country for developers, according to Heatmap Pro’s database. But Collier had expressed openness to allowing new solar to be built on a case-by-case basis, while Keesee ran on a platform focused almost exclusively on blocking solar development. Collier ultimately placed third in the primary, behind Keesee and another anti-solar candidate placing second.
Fighting solar is a personal issue for Keesee (pronounced keh-see, like “messy”). She has aggressively fought Frasier Solar – a 120 megawatt solar project in the country proposed by Open Road Renewables – getting involved in organizing against the project and regularly attending state regulator hearings. Filings she submitted to the Ohio Power Siting Board state she owns a property at least somewhat adjacent to the proposed solar farm. Based on the sheer volume of those filings this is clearly her passion project – alongside preaching and comparing gay people to Hitler.
Yesterday I spoke to Collier who told me the Frasier Solar project motivated Keesee’s candidacy. He remembered first encountering her at a community meeting – “she verbally accosted me” – and that she “decided she’d run against me because [the solar farm] was going to be next to her house.” In his view, he lost the race because excitement and money combined to produce high anti-solar turnout in a kind of local government primary that ordinarily has low campaign spending and is quite quiet. Some of that funding and activity has been well documented.
“She did it right: tons of ground troops, people from her church, people she’s close with went door-to-door, and they put out lots of propaganda. She got them stirred up that we were going to take all the farmland and turn it into solar,” he said.
Collier’s takeaway from the race was that local commissioner races are particularly vulnerable to the sorts of disinformation, campaign spending and political attacks we’re used to seeing more often in races for higher offices at the state and federal level.
“Unfortunately it has become this,” he bemoaned, “fueled by people who have little to no knowledge of what we do or how we do it. If you stir up enough stuff and you cry out loud enough and put up enough misinformation, people will start to believe it.”
Races like these are happening elsewhere in Ohio and in other states like Georgia, where opposition to a battery plant mobilized Republican primaries. As the climate world digests the federal election results and tries to work backwards from there, perhaps at least some attention will refocus on local campaigns like these.
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And more of the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Madison County, Missouri – A giant battery material recycling plant owned by Critical Mineral Recovery exploded and became engulfed in flames last week, creating a potential Vineyard Wind-level PR headache for energy storage.
2. Benton County, Washington State – Governor Jay Inslee finally got state approvals finished for Scout Clean Energy’s massive Horse Heaven wind farm after a prolonged battle over project siting, cultural heritage management, and bird habitat.
3. Fulton County, Georgia – A large NextEra battery storage facility outside of Atlanta is facing a lawsuit that commingles usual conflicts over building these properties with environmental justice concerns, I’ve learned.
Here’s what else I’m watching…
In Colorado, Weld County commissioners approved part of one of the largest solar projects in the nation proposed by Balanced Rock Power.
In New Mexico, a large solar farm in Sandoval County proposed by a subsidiary of U.S. PCR Investments on land typically used for cattle is facing consternation.
In Pennsylvania, Schuylkill County commissioners are thinking about new solar zoning restrictions.
In Kentucky, Lost City Renewables is still wrestling with local concerns surrounding a 1,300-acre solar farm in rural Muhlenberg County.
In Minnesota, Ranger Power’s Gopher State solar project is starting to go through the public hearing process.
In Texas, Trina Solar – a company media reports have linked to China – announced it sold a large battery plant the day after the election. It was acquired by Norwegian company FREYR.What happened this week in climate and energy policy, beyond the federal election results.
1. It’s the election, stupid – We don’t need to retread who won the presidential election this week (or what it means for the Inflation Reduction Act). But there were also big local control votes worth watching closely.
2. Michigan lawsuit watch – Michigan has a serious lawsuit brewing over its law taking some control of renewable energy siting decisions away from municipalities.
A conversation with Frank Wolak of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association.
We’re joined today by Frank Wolak, CEO of perhaps the most crucial D.C. trade group for all things hydrogen: the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association. The morning after Election Day we chatted about whether Trump 2.0 will be as receptive as members of Congress have been to hydrogen and the IRA’s tax credit for producing the fuel. Let’s look inside his crystal ball, shall we?
Simply put, will president-elect Donald Trump keep the IRA’s 45V tax credit in place?
So a couple things there. First, the production tax credit still has to be finalized and what they do about the tax credits, if anything, is a function of whether the Biden administration issues final guidance.
If they issue final guidance, then what that guidance says will determine what kind of reaction the Trump administration may have, whether to adjust it or tweak it.
The second thing: I think the tax credits fit into a question of the IRA broadly and hydrogen specifically. The Trump administration is going to be looking at the entirety of the IRA. There’s the question of what pushback hydrogen has in this administration and if it’s viewed as valuable or important or secondary, tertiary to other things. And I think we’ve yet to see that in the form of any platform.
So Trump’s view on hydrogen is a mystery then – how will that uncertainty impact hydrogen projects in development today?
The uncertainty that has been experienced by this industry predates the election outcome. The long wait for guidance has definitely slowed down the amount of investment. They’ve put many things on hold. This is not a secret.
What I’ll say is, the ability to regroup and fulfill the expectations that this industry had two or three years ago is hugely dependent on the outcome of the tax credit.
What do you think we’ll see companies do in this information vacuum? Will we see them double down on supporting the credit or potentially get out of hydrogen since it’s an emerging, nascent technology?
The doubling down on the tax credit depends on what the guidance looks like.
If the guidance looks flexible, the question is: how do you take that flexibility and make sure the Trump administration continues it and sees it as valuable or vital?
If the tax credit becomes rigid and stays rigid in the Biden administration, you’ll have a two step process – to unwind the rigidity and then also encourage the Trump administration to see the merits. If the guidance stays as stated, the work is harder.
The degree to which industry continues to make investments and says, “hey, we’re all in,” is a function of how these tax credits emerged. Are they going to really keep fighting and to keep the momentum going, or are the [credits] so limited that companies go, “look this is going to be very very hard to overcome in the U.S. so we’re going to take our investment elsewhere.”
You think we might see companies dip out of the hydrogen space over the credit’s outcome?
Mature long term players who are multinationals … are remaining extremely positive. They may adjust the sequence of their investments but they’re in this because they’re in hydrogen and want to be in this market as much as possible.
But those who saw this as an opportunity to come in and take advantage of tax credits are having those reactions of, “Should I invest? Do I look [at it] positively?” And that’s probably natural.