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Spotlight

The Trump Solar Farm Slowdown

Permitting delays and missed deadlines are bedeviling solar developers and activist groups alike. What’s going on?

Donald Trump and solar panels.
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It’s no longer possible to say the Trump administration is moving solar projects along as one of the nation’s largest solar farms is being quietly delayed and even observers fighting the project aren’t sure why.

Months ago, it looked like Trump was going to start greenlighting large-scale solar with an emphasis out West. Agency spokespeople told me Trump’s 60-day pause on permitting solar projects had been lifted and then the Bureau of Land Management formally approved its first utility-scale project under this administration, Leeward Renewable Energy’s Elisabeth solar project in Arizona, and BLM also unveiled other solar projects it “reasonably” expected would be developed in the area surrounding Elisabeth.

But the biggest indicator of Trump’s thinking on solar out west was Esmeralda 7, a compilation of solar project proposals in western Nevada from NextEra, Invenergy, Arevia, ConnectGen, and other developers that would, if constructed, produce at least 6 gigawatts of power. My colleague Matthew Zeitlin was first to report that BLM officials updated the timetable for fully permitting the expansive project to say it would complete its environmental review by late April and be completely finished with the federal bureaucratic process by mid-July. BLM told Matthew that the final environmental impact statement – the official study completing the environmental review – would be published “in the coming days or week or so.”

More than two months later, it’s crickets from BLM on Esmeralda 7. BLM never released the study that its website as of today still says should’ve come out in late April. I asked BLM for comment on this and a spokesperson simply told me the agency “does not have any updates to share on this project at this time.”

This state of quiet stasis is not unique to Esmeralda; for example, Leeward has yet to receive a final environmental impact statement for its 700 mega-watt Copper Rays solar project in Nevada’s Pahrump Valley that BLM records state was to be published in early May. Earlier this month, BLM updated the project timeline for another Nevada solar project – EDF’s Bonanza – to say it would come out imminently, too, but nothing’s been released.

Delays happen in the federal government and timelines aren’t always met. But on its face, it is hard for stakeholders I speak with out in Nevada to take these months-long stutters as simply good faith bureaucratic hold-ups. And it’s even making work fighting solar for activists out in the desert much more confusing.

For Shaaron Netherton, executive director of the conservation group Friends of the Nevada Wilderness, these solar project permitting delays mean an uncertain future. Friends of the Nevada Wilderness is a volunteer group of ecology protection activists that is opposing Esmeralda 7 and filed its first lawsuit against Greenlink West, a transmission project that will connect the massive solar constellation to the energy grid. Netherton told me her group may sue against the approval of Esmeralda 7… but that the next phase of their battle against the project is a hazy unknown.

“It’s just kind of a black hole,” she told me of the Esmeralda 7 permitting process. “We will litigate Esmeralda 7 if we have to, and we were hoping that with this administration there would be a little bit of a pause. There may be. That’s still up in the air.”

I’d like to note that Netherton’s organization has different reasons for opposition than I normally write about in The Fight. Instead of concerns about property values or conspiracies about battery fires, her organization and a multitude of other desert ecosystem advocates are trying to avoid a future where large industries of any type harm or damage one of the nation’s most biodiverse and undeveloped areas.

This concern for nature has historically motivated environmental activism. But it’s also precisely the sort of advocacy that Trump officials have opposed tooth-and-nail, dating back to the president’s previous term, when advocates successfully opposed his rewrite of Endangered Species Act regulations. This reason – a motivation to hippie-punch, so to speak – is a reason why I hardly expect species protection to be enough of a concern to stop solar projects in their tracks under Trump, at least for now. There’s also the whole “energy dominance” thing, though Trump has been wishy-washy on adhering to that goal.

Patrick Donnelly, great basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, agrees that this is a period of confusion but not necessarily an end to solar permitting on BLM land.

“[Solar] is moving a lot slower than it was six months ago, when it was coming at a breakneck pace,” said Patrick Donnelly of the Center for Biological Diversity. “How much of that is ideological versus 15-20% of the agencies taking early retirement and utter chaos inside the agencies? I’m not sure. But my feeling is it’s less ideological. I really don’t think Trump’s going to just start saying no to these energy projects.”

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Spotlight

The Fate of Wind Energy in Arkansas Is on Eagles’ Wings

The Nimbus wind project in the Ozark Mountains is moving forward even without species permits, while locals pray Trump will shut it down.

An eagle, wind power, and Arkansas.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The state of Arkansas is quickly becoming an important bellwether for the future of renewable energy deployment in the U.S., and a single project in the state’s famed Ozark Mountains might be the big fight that decides which way the state’s winds blow.

Arkansas has not historically been a renewables-heavy state, and very little power there is generated from solar or wind today. But after passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the state saw a surge in project development, with more than 1.5 gigawatts of mostly utility-scale solar proposed in 2024, according to industry data. The state also welcomed its first large wind farm that year.

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Hotspots

Offshore Wind Bluster Hits New England


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

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Newport County, Rhode Island – The Trump administration escalated its onslaught against the offshore wind sector in the past week … coincidentally (or not) right after a New England-based anti-wind organization requested that it do so.

  • Over the Labor Day weekend, the Trump administration stated in a court filing that it planned to potentially redo the record of decision for Orsted’s SouthCoast wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, and yesterday, Justice Department officials said they would vacate the approval of Avangrid’s construction and operations plan for its New England 1 offshore project.
  • These announcements got a lot of media attention. Less focus was bestowed on what preceded these moves: Last week, the anti-wind organization Green Oceans partnered with four tribes native to the Northeast and together sent petitions to the Interior and Transportation Departments, as well as the Defense Department, calling for the “immediate suspension” of offshore wind in the region.
  • According to a press release, the petitions asked for projects under construction to stop work as well as called for an end to the operation of South Fork, a completed and operating wind farm off the coast of New York. The petitions rely largely on a national security rationale that mirrors the administration’s reasoning for halting work on Orsted’s Revolution Wind offshore project. (Orsted sued over that move today, by the way.)
  • We cannot say at the moment how much this specific maneuver mattered to an administration already hostile to offshore wind. But there’s reason to believe Green Oceans is an influential organization within Trump administration circles. Early this year I reported on a roadmap created by a constellation of opposition groups, including the head of Green Oceans, and submitted to the Trump transition team showing how the incoming administration could block offshore wind development. Several of the turns in that roadmap have ultimately come to pass.
  • We also now know that Green Oceans has been in direct contact with Trump officials about individual offshore wind projects. Last week, E&E News published internal emails that showed the organization obtained a meeting in May with senior Interior Department officials to discuss cancelling all current offshore wind leases held by developers.
  • At this juncture, it’s genuinely impossible to know how far Trump will go. But now we know the opposition to offshore wind is going for the Full Monty: shutting down operating projects on a national security justification.

2. Madison County, New York – Officials in this county are using a novel method to target a wind project: They’re claiming it’ll disrupt 911 calls.

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Q&A

How Renewable Projects Can Be a Political Win-Win

Chatting party polarization with League of Conservation Voters CEO Pete Maysmith.

The CEO of the League of Conservation Voters.
Heatmap Illustration

For this week’s conversation I chatted with Pete Maysmith, CEO of the League of Conservation Voters. There’s no one I’d rather talk to at a moment when any conflict over a solar farm can turn into the equivalent of a heated political campaign. I wanted to know how LCV is approaching the way renewables are becoming more partisan and the insurgent rise of local opposition to project development. Thankfully, Maysmith was willing to take some time right before the Labor Day weekend to sit in my hot seat.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

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