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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

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Q&A

How Developers Should Think of the New IRA Credit Rules

A conversation with Scott Cockerham of Latham and Watkins.

How Developers Should Think of the New IRA Credit Rules
Heatmap Illustration

This week’s conversation is with Scott Cockerham, a partner with the law firm Latham and Watkins whose expertise I sought to help me best understand the Treasury Department’s recent guidance on the federal solar and wind tax credits. We focused on something you’ve probably been thinking about a lot: how to qualify for the “start construction” part of the new tax regime, which is the primary hurdle for anyone still in the thicket of a fight with local opposition.

The following is our chat lightly edited for clarity. Enjoy.

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Hotspots

An Influential Anti-ESG Activist Targets A Wind Farm

And more of the week’s most important news around renewable energy conflicts.

Map of renewable energy fights.
Heatmap Illustration

1. Carroll County, Arkansas – The head of an influential national right-wing advocacy group is now targeting a wind project in Arkansas, seeking federal intervention to block something that looked like it would be built.

  • Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, recently called on the Trump administration to intervene against the development of Scout Clean Energy’s Nimbus wind project in Arkansas. Consumers’ Research is known as one of the leading anti-ESG advocacy organizations, playing a key role in the “anti-woke” opposition against the climate- and socially-conscious behavior of everyone from utilities to Anheuser-Busch.
  • In a lengthy rant posted to X earlier this month, Hild pointed to Carroll County’s local moratorium on wind projects and claimed Nimbus being built would be “a massive win for ESG radicals – and a slap in the face for local democracy.”
  • As I told you in April, the Nimbus project prompted Carroll County to enact the moratorium but it was grandfathered in because of contracts signed prior to the ban’s enactment.
  • However, even though Nimbus is not sited on federal land, there is a significant weak point for the project: its potential impacts on endangered birds and bats.
  • Scout Clean Energy has been working with the Fish and Wildlife Service since at least 2018 under Trump 1.0. However, the project’s habitat conservation plan was not completed before the start of the current Trump term and Scout did not submit an application for Nimbus to receive an incidental take permit from the Service until May of this year.
  • Enter the Trump administration’s bird-centric wind power crackdown and the impact of Hild’s commentary comes into fuller focus. What will happen to all the years of work that Scout and the Service did? It’s unclear how the project reckons with this heightened scrutiny and risk of undue federal attention.

2. Suffolk County, New York – EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin this week endorsed efforts by activists on Long Island to oppose energy storage in their neighborhoods.

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Spotlight

Trump’s Permit Freeze Prompts Some Solar to Eye Exits

Is there going to be a flight out of Nevada?

Solar in Nevada.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Donald Trump’s renewables permitting freeze is prompting solar companies to find an escape hatch from Nevada.

As I previously reported, the Interior Department has all but halted new approvals for solar and wind projects on federal lands. It was entirely unclear how that would affect transmission out west, including in the solar-friendly Nevada desert where major lines were in progress to help power both communities and a growing number of data centers. Shortly after the pause, I took notice of the fact that regulators quietly delayed the timetable by at least two weeks for a key line – the northern portion of NV Energy’s Greenlink project – that had been expected to connect to a litany of solar facilities. Interior told me it still planned to complete the project in September, but it also confirmed that projects specifically necessary for connecting solar onto the grid would face “enhanced” reviews.

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