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Conservationists won the last round, but this time the stakes involve new renewables technology.
The future of floating offshore wind in America rests on a feud between YIMBY state officials and a government whistleblower over a bucolic island off the coast of Maine. I have no clue who will win.
Floating offshore wind is Maine’s best bet for wind power in deeper stretches of ocean, far away from beach views, coastal properties, and valuable fishing grounds. The tech — which other countries have tried to deploy but is still unproven at large commercial scale — offers a hypothetical panacea for the sorts of conflicts that often stymie offshore wind, and other states are looking to it as a solution for these thorny issues, including California.
But Maine has chosen to construct its floating offshore wind turbine assembly site at Sears Island, a naturalist tourist destination in Penobscot Bay. Conservationists in New England have fought for a long time to preserve the island, an incredibly biodiverse ecosystem rich with wetlands, from the Maine Department of Transportation, which over decades has attempted to use a section of the island for various forms of infrastructure, including an industrial port.
Now that this longstanding conflict has become intertwined with the cause of carbon reduction, it is pitting an older generation of eco-warriors against a younger breed of climate activists, as well as local unions eager to get in on energy transition jobs. Unfortunately for Maine regulators, one of the old heads opposing this project is Kyla Bennett, a former wetlands permitting staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency who stopped a previous effort by the Maine Department of Transportation to build a port at Sears Island in the 1990s.
At EPA, Bennett determined that constructing the port would’ve been illegal under the Clean Water Act because of the sheer proliferation of obvious wetlands. When political officials interceded and reassigned her to a different job, she blew the whistle on them — and won, winning back her post. The port permits were also denied.
Bennett is now a key organizer for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an organization that represents whistleblowers doing environmental protection work in government. And she’s making it a hobby horse to, again, stop Sears Island from becoming a port — even if it’s in the name of developing technology that could stem the tide of climate change.
“It’s déjà vu. It’s really disturbing to me that it’s back and we have to do this all over again,” she told me.
The facility has to go somewhere because, well, the technicians and researchers need a place to build these turbines, and Maine has claimed that no port existing today on the East Coast fits the precise spacing and resource needs. Habib Dagher, a University of Maine professor who leads the consortium plotting a U.S. offshore wind industry, told me constructing a port for assembly is “critical” to near-term success.
Yet there is another option. Moffat and Nichols, the engineering firm that studied port locations for Maine regulators, did conclude Mack Point, an existing import terminal on the coast of the Penobscot owned by Sprague Energy, would also fit the bill. Sprague is proposing to pay for a large expansion of Mack Point to take this floating offshore wind business off of Sears Island. Not only does it already have existing rail infrastructure and a long history of working in energy and construction but crucially, the engineering firm also found that siting the assembly facility there would shave years off the permitting and construction timetable for making floating offshore wind a reality.
Legally, this alternative matters, and federal regulators will decide who wins this fight. Maine regulators are expected to submit paperwork to begin the permitting process under the National Environmental Policy Act for building the assembly site at Sears Island in the coming weeks. As they do so, they will be required to explain how this plan offers the “least environmentally damaging practicable alternative” under environmental law. And Bennett is confident their claims will not pass muster in court, if not with career EPA staff.
“It cannot be legally permitted,” she confessed. “We will sue them.”
So I sought out to answer this pesky question: Why is Maine trying to build this crucial infrastructure for the energy transition in a place with activist resistance, and where even its own consultants have said the process would take longer?
State regulators, politicians, and supporters of the Sears Island plan have a few reasons. First off, Maine Governor Janet Mills has bemoaned that to use Mack Point would require leasing the property from Sprague, which would mean a recurring cost to taxpayers. There are also size issues — the Maine Department of Transportation claims there simply wouldn’t be enough space at Mack Point for researchers and, eventually, industry to do their work.
“We know there would be environmental impacts at both the Mack Point and Sears Island sites,” Paul Merrill, director of communications for the Maine Department of Transportation, told me in an email Monday evening. “The bottom line is that the port Maine needs simply doesn’t fit at Mack Point. Sprague has a financial interest in development on Mack Point. Our goal is to develop a port that is in the best interest of the public.”
Merrill did acknowledge the new proposal for Sears Island would be located on “the same part of the island that was discussed for development in the 1990s.”
Sprague denies the logistical issues with building the port at Mack Point and told me issues Maine regulators are easily resolved. The company has begun campaigning to win key stakeholders to its side, publishing op-eds and meeting with environmental advocates. On September 12, Sierra Club’s Maine chapter hosted a virtual event with a Sprague executive, Jim Theriault, about how the port selection “needs to be considered carefully.” When I spoke to Theriault this week, he told me that Sierra Club members were asking the same question I was.
“At the end of the day, we’d be reusing an industrial site, and we’d relocate what we do to other parts of the terminal,” he said. “I’ll make myself available to anybody that wants to talk.”
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A conversation with Frank Maisano of Bracewell
Today’s Q&A is with Frank Maisano, one of the most sought-after energy lobbyists in Washington. Maisano, a Beltway veteran who has worked in Congress as well, has a long history with me that goes back to the earliest days of my environmental reporting career. So when I helped author a story for Heatmap this week about the budget risks to the Inflation Reduction Act, he reached out and asked if he could give me his take: that our reporting missed the mark.
Naturally, I asked if I could publish the whole thing in my newsletter, because what good is a lobbyist’s words if they aren’t written down? The following is an abridged version of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
Frank, once again, thanks for taking the time to reach out and tell us why we’re wrong. Let’s start with my burning question: tell me why?
Well I don’t know that everything you wrote about is wrong, but I think historical perspective is important here. Unfortunately when you’re as old as I am, and have been involved in this game as long as I have, you know from things that happened before that everything is not new again.
When I worked on the Appropriations Committee in 1994, 1995 and Republicans took over with House Speaker Newt Gingrich, many of these types of budget-cutting plans were in place. At the time, Republicans didn’t have total control because Clinton was president, but Project 2025 isn’t just Project 2025. It was Project 2005. It was Project 1985. The Heritage Foundation has been making these proposals every year for the 40 years I’ve been around. I’d just want to remind people of the operational historical context for how Congress works and how folks have been trying to do this for years.
I was talking to somebody the other day and I said, Talk to me in December of this year. Because in December of this year, a lot of this hyperbolic symbolism and walking people out of agencies — all of this will be over. Congress will have spoken and we’ll have a better sense of the true direction they’re going in.
I’m not going to say there won’t be significant cuts. I suspect there will be reductions in government spending. But it’s certainly not going to be as harried, frantic, and news-splashed as we’re seeing now.
Do you actually think these Republicans who signed onto a letter defending the Inflation Reduction Act will stand by these statements when a final bill comes for a vote?
Are you asking if the 21 will stand by the statements?
Yeah, I mean, the point of our story was to say the budget math matters more than that and there’ll be a choice between tax cuts and saving more of the IRA.
Like I said, when we went through this in 1994, you would think the budget math mattered more, but it never does. Once people start lobbying and start advocating for their own constituencies, local projects, I think you’re going to see a significant trimming of the attitude.
There’s a few people who, budget be damned, will be in the ‘let’s cut everything’ book. I don’t think that’s a majority of the [Republican] caucus, though, especially when you look at provisions of the IRA. There are many provisions of the IRA that are how Republicans have done energy policy for years. There were provisions in the bipartisan infrastructure law that were how Republicans have done energy policy for years.
Has every Republican supported it? No. Are there certain loud voices on the budget hawk side? Absolutely. Do either of those sides have a full measure of support that’s going to pull someone like a tug of war over to the other side? Most likely not. There’s going to have to be an internal party agreement but also an internal congressional agreement which I think will tend to pull this budget hawk-ness further away from the absolute spending cuts they want to impose.
Do you think the administration’s views on wind, solar, or battery storage deployment will matter when it comes to the fate of the IRA?
They may have a specific view. But a lot of it is out of their hands. The market has made decisions already. Utilities, investor-owned, even rural co-op utilities have made decisions already in balancing their generation sources.
I don’t think any sort of administration policy to X one off or close it out is probably that viable. Especially in the sense where we need all the energy we can get.
Demand takes control of the policy levers. We saw this with the Biden administration on oil and gas where they tried mightily to reduce our output, but then 2022 came around and they felt compelled to push more development and then we had record development under the Biden administration.
I think we’re going to see similar energy trends in this administration with the policy levers the administration is less interested in. Let me give you an example: I think offshore wind is going to still be able to play a role in meeting that energy demand. Look at what’s happening in the Northeast, and in Virginia, where they have incredible energy demand projections. Offshore wind along with natural gas along with some nuclear are [together] going to play a role in how we meet that demand in the future. Even if the administration pushes back on offshore wind, [Republican Virginia Gov.] Glenn Youngkin sees it as a part of his mix and that is a powerful force. I see that offsetting some of the policy push preferences this administration might have.
I know in the ‘90s you were involved in navigating this, but I’m still wondering after all this if the budget math we brought up in our story and parliamentary procedure will matter…
It certainly does matter and it’s certainly one way to look at it. But Congress has a way of coming to a deal.
1. Bristol County, Massachusetts – The state of Massachusetts is abandoning plans to build an offshore wind research center in New Bedford, a fishing town that has also hosted protests against Vineyard Wind.
2. Long Island, New York – Speaking of offshore wind woes, the anti-wind activist movement is now circling Empire Wind and asking President Donald Trump to rescind the EPA air permit to the Equinor offshore project.
3. Fayette County, Pennsylvania – This sought-after county for solar development appears to be on the precipice of enacting a sweeping 500-foot property setback requirement.
4. Tippecanoe County, Indiana – Solar developer Geenex is beginning what’ll likely be a tense battle to win special zoning approval for a large utility-scale solar project in an area that already is subject to a restrictive setback ordinance.
5. Jefferson County, Wisconsin – We’re about to get a glimpse of whether Wisconsin can be as difficult a battleground for large-scale solar in rural areas as Ohio.
6. Routt County, Colorado – We have our first-ever entry of Hotspots from Colorado, thanks to a zoning snafu.
7. Fannin County, Texas – County commissioners here are now forming a joint planning committee with the city of Savoy, where we told you residents fearful after the Moss Landing battery fire are trying to stop an Engie storage facility from being built.
8. Fresno County, California – The Moss Landing fire isn’t stopping Gov. Gavin Newsom from expediting new battery storage project permits.
9. Alaska – How do you kill a battery project if no one’s around to protest? Take away its money… and that’s why my mind is on the Kodiak State.
Developers have yet to see the approvals start flowing, however.
The Bureau of Land Management claims that Trump’s pause on solar energy permitting is no longer in effect — though no permits have yet come of it.
President Trump paused permitting for solar as well as wind projects for 60 days via executive order on his first day in office. The expiration date on that pause was technically last Friday, and in an exclusive statement to Heatmap, BLM spokesperson Brian Hires said “there is currently no freeze on processing renewable applications for solar” or “making authorization decisions” on projects.
Hires also said all transmission for wind projects is now allowed to advance through federal permitting, a statement that arrives after the agency indicated in emails I obtained that it may soon approve wires for a wind project in Wyoming sited on private land. BLM also approved a transmission project for a solar farm earlier this month, a decision it made public with a press release that also declared solar was part of the president’s “energy dominance” agenda.
This might sound like good news. But I’m going to wait and see before declaring the permitting pause for solar officially dead because we’ve yet to see a solar farm on federal lands permitted under Trump 2.0.
As we reported in February, a leaked industry memo outlined how Trump’s permitting freeze led to chaos and delays for solar energy developers who found that agencies on the fringes of the process — such as the Army Corps of Engineers — were suddenly dragging their feet on crucial permits. Even after the Army Corps told me it was no longer delaying solar permits, I heard conflicting tales from developers, who said there was a disconnect between the public line and government inaction behind the scenes.
A D.C. solar industry lobbyist who requested anonymity to speak candidly on the matter said they’ve yet to receive any clarity on whether the pause has actually been lifted and whether permits will actually be issued now. The source said they’ve heard little from state BLM offices or staff in Washington about what projects may be approved, and that the Interior Department — which oversees BLM — has been “weirdly opaque” with solar developers so far in Trump’s term.
“We can’t get straight answers,” the lobbyist said.
BLM told me the pause is still in effect for wind projects sited on federal lands and in federal waters, pending completion of a comprehensive government review of the wind sector’s environmental and national security implications. There’s been no timetable or deadline set for finishing that review, which has so far been conducted in secret. The agency did not provide me with any information on that study.