The Fight

Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Spotlight

Interior’s Renewables Attacks Snag Power Lines

Nevada's Greenlink North is hit with a short, but ominous delay.

Solar panels and pylons.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I can now confirm the Trump administration’s recent attacks on renewables permitting appear to be impacting transmission projects, too.

Over the past two weeks, the Interior Department has laid forth secretarial orders implementing a new regime for renewables permitting on federal lands. This has appeared to essentially kill the odds of utility-scale solar or wind projects on federal land getting approved any time soon. Public timetables for large solar projects across the American West have suddenly slipped back by years-long intervals, and other mega-projects – like Esmeralda 7 – appear now to be trapped in limbo.

Amidst this flurry of secretarial orders, Nevada’s Republican Governor Joe Lombardo has signaled that transmission lines attached to renewable energy are also being trapped in the political thicket, even if the energy they would connect to is on private land. In a letter first reported by E&E News, Lombardo told Interior that his office has heard the recent orders have “not only stopped solar development on federal lands in Nevada, but also on private land where federal approvals such as transmission line rights of way are required.” Lombardo pleaded with Interior to “empower career staff to continue issuing approvals for projects sited on private lands where there is a federal nexus, such as transmission line rights of way.”

John Hensley, the senior vice president for markets and policy analysis for the American Clean Power Association, confirmed to me that, at a minimum, the newly anti-renewable Interior has also been hyper-focused on transmission lines connected to solar and wind. “I do believe that when considering transmission projects that are principally designed to enable wind and solar, those are certainly getting increased scrutiny and being brought into focus,” he told me this week.

As of today, I can report at least one major transmission line in Nevada that would connect to solar appears to be delayed: NV Energy’s Greenlink North, the second part of a sprawling transmission project that could, according to its permitting documents, cross areas with upwards of at least two dozen pending solar project applications, according to its environmental impact statement. The other major arm of the project, known as Greenlink West, was approved by the Biden administration but then met with litigation from environmental groups who are opposed to it over the possibility that it will harm endangered wildlife.

This spring, it looked like Greenlink North – which NV Energy has claimed is not tied to the completion of any individual solar project – would be an example of Trump embracing transmission and a neutral “all of the above” approach to power lines. The Bureau of Land Management released the environmental impact statement for the project and said it would deliver its final ruling on Sept. 12. In a press release, the agency said the line was “designed to increase transmission capacity and reliability across the state in support of American Energy Dominance.”

However, that was before far-right members of Congress asked the administration last month to attack renewable energy in exchange for passing Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.

Quietly, as of today, the Bureau of Land Management’s updated public project timetable for Greenlink North now says its record of decision will be released by Sept. 30. An 18-day slippage might seem benign, but agencies, including BLM, often use the end of a month marker as boilerplate when they’re unsure of when they’ll actually finish something. One can easily imagine this date slipping far beyond September, unless something changes.

It is altogether unclear what led BLM to slide the timetable back for Greenlink North to an end-of-month date like this. Yesterday, the agency uploaded appendixes to the permitting documents for the project, indicating things were moving smoothly. The agency did not release a public explanation for the deadline change.

Patrick Donnelly, an organizer with Center for Biological Diversity, told me last week that he’s split on how to feel about the Trump administration’s attacks on solar and related transmission projects in Nevada. On the one hand, in his view, stopping Greenlink North “will be beneficial for the environment.” I have no doubt he’s probably celebrating the delay that I am reporting today.

But Donnelly sees the obvious downsides. “If we’re looking at killing renewable energy, that is extremely harmful and we do not support that. We’ve always said there is a right place to put renewable energy on public lands,” he said. “I don’t want my home destroyed by solar panels. But I also don’t want no solar energy.”

I asked BLM to confirm that transmission projects linked to renewable energy are also subject to the ongoing permitting freeze, as well as for an explanation of the Greenlink North delay. BLM confirmed receipt of my request but was unable to provide comment by press time. We will update our story accordingly if and when we receive a statement from them.

Yellow

This article is exclusively
for Heatmap Plus subscribers.

Go deeper inside the politics, projects, and personalities
shaping the energy transition.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Spotlight

How a Giant Solar Farm Flopped in Rural Texas

Amarillo-area residents successfully beat back a $600 million project from Xcel Energy that would have provided useful tax revenue.

Texas and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Power giant Xcel Energy just suffered a major public relations flap in the Texas Panhandle, scrubbing plans for a solar project amidst harsh backlash from local residents.

On Friday, Xcel Energy withdrew plans to build a $600 million solar project right outside of Rolling Hills, a small, relatively isolated residential neighborhood just north of the city of Amarillo, Texas. The project was part of several solar farms it had proposed to the Texas Public Utilities Commission to meet the load growth created by the state’s AI data center boom. As we’ve covered in The Fight, Texas should’ve been an easier place to do this, and there were few if any legal obstacles standing in the way of the project, dubbed Oneida 2. It was sited on private lands, and Texas counties lack the sort of authority to veto projects you’re used to seeing in, say, Ohio or California.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

A Data Center Is Dead, Long Live a Solar Farm

And more of the most important news about renewable projects fighting it out this week.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Racine County, Wisconsin – Microsoft is scrapping plans for a data center after fierce opposition from a host community in Wisconsin.

  • The town of Caledonia was teed up to approve land rezoning for the facility, which would’ve been Microsoft’s third data center in the state. Dubbed “Project Nova,” the data center would have sat near an existing We Energies natural gas power plant.
  • After considerable pushback at community meetings, the tech giant announced Friday that it would either give up on the project or relocate it elsewhere to avoid more fervent opposition.
  • “While we have decided not to proceed with this particular site, we remain fully committed to investing in Southeast Wisconsin. We view this as a healthy step toward building a project that aligns with community priorities and supports shared goals,” Microsoft said in a statement published to its website, adding that it will attempt to “identify a site that supports both community priorities and our long-term development objectives.”
  • A review of the project opponents’ PR materials shows their campaign centered on three key themes: the risk of higher electricity bills, environmental impacts of construction and traffic, and a lack of clarity around how data centers could be a public good. Activists also frequently compared Project Nova to a now-infamous failed project in Wisconsin from the Chinese tech manufacturer Foxconn.

2. Rockingham County, Virginia – Another day, another chokepoint in Dominion Energy’s effort to build more solar energy to power surging load growth in the state, this time in the quaint town of Timberville.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Q&A

How the AI Boom Could Come Back Around for Natural Gas

A conversation with Enchanted Rock’s Joel Yu.

The Fight Q & A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

This week’s chat was with Joel Yu, senior vice president for policy and external affairs at the data center micro-grid services company Enchanted Rock. Now, Enchanted Rock does work I usually don’t elevate in The Fight – gas-power tracking – but I wanted to talk to him about how conflicts over renewable energy are affecting his business, too. You see, when you talk to solar or wind developers about the potential downsides in this difficult economic environment, they’re willing to be candid … but only to a certain extent. As I expected, someone like Yu who is separated enough from the heartburn that is the Trump administration’s anti-renewables agenda was able to give me a sober truth: Land use and conflicts over siting are going to advantage fossil fuels in at least some cases.

The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow