My biggest takeaway of this year? Bad information is breaking the energy transition – and the fake news is only getting more powerful.
Across the country, we’re seeing solar, wind, and battery storage projects grind to a halt thanks to activism powered by fears of health and safety risks, many of which are unfounded, unproven, exaggerated, or conspiratorial in nature. There are some prominent examples, like worries about offshore wind and whales, but I’ve spent a large chunk of The Fight’s lifespan so far investigating a few crucial case studies, from wildfire fears confronting battery developers in California to cancer concerns curtailing a crucial transmission line in New Jersey. To tell you the honest truth, it is difficult to quantify just how troubling this issue is for the industry.
False information is something Mark Thomson, a D.C.-based attorney with the law firm Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch LLP, thinks about a lot these days. Thomson was one of the lawyers who won a record $787 million settlement for Dominion Voting Systems from Fox News Network after it broadcast incorrect claims about how the company’s ballot machines were used in the 2020 election. Today his attention is elsewhere – conspiracy-powered defamation against renewables developers and their projects. .
“This is a sizable and growing part of what we do here,” Thomson told me. “I think it’s because the developer sector writ large increasingly understands the severity and the pervasiveness of falsehoods in that space, and also just as importantly how quickly groups and communities can latch onto these falsehoods in ways that critically interrupt and even endanger some of these projects.”
Why are we talking about conspiracy theorists as an opposition powerhouse? Well, studies show that like working in agriculture or owning large tracts of land, scientific skepticism can be a big signal that someone will oppose a renewables project. A 2022 study published in the journal Nature Energy found “moderate-to-large” relationships between indices of conspiracy beliefs and the likelihood that someone would oppose a wind farm, and that the relationship between wind farm opposition and conspiracy beliefs was “many times greater than its relationship with age, gender, education, and political orientation.”
Conspiracies or misinformation can also be weaponized by hostile local, state, or federal regulators if they have other reasons to try and curtail development.
Take St. Clair County, Michigan, where a leading local public health official is leveraging theories about the impact of solar energy to try and limit development. St. Clair County is home to its own fun blend of renewables consternation. The most acerbic fight is in the town of Fort Gratiot, where Ranger Power subsidiary Portside Solar has proposed to construct a 100 MW solar facility. The project is in a rural, largely agricultural region and has faced incredible resentment. (If you want a primer on the conflict, watch this interview segment – in between featured ads for Ivermectin.)
Last Thursday evening, St. Clair County medical director Remington Nevin testified before the county’s board of commission that “very clear health threats” caused by solar energy required “extraordinary actions” under the state public health code. Nevin specifically addressed noise, claiming that the sound produced by hypothetical solar facilities could “presumably be an unreasonable threat to public health” if not kept below certain decibel thresholds.
“This should not be controversial,” Nevin told the audience, which erupted into rapturous applause after his testimony.
This testimony, prompted by public comments from disgruntled residents, came after Nevin issued a report detailing his desires for quick action under the public health code that circulated widely on anti-renewables Facebook groups.
Nevin is definitely a qualified medical professional. “Occupational medicine is the successor to the field of industrial medicine,” Nevin told me when I emailed him about his qualifications, “and is the medical speciality most applicable to the health effects of industrial activities such as these.” He noted that he has a doctoral public health degree in mental health and psychiatric epidemiology, and has done fellowship training in occupation and environmental medicine.
But he is not a specialist in the health effects of solar panels. He’s actually an expert in quinism, a brain and brainstem disease caused by a toxic exposure to anti-malaria drugs. This position made him relevant during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when he spoke out about the risks of taking hydroxychloroquine, an unproven COVID-19 treatment that Trump and other socially conservative figures began recommending at the height of the pandemic lockdowns. Nevin took a more contrarian view of the scientific debate around COVID-19 during those lockdowns, signing a declaration to open society up before a vaccine was widely available. He still feels passionately about this topic today, celebrating Trump’s pick to run the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who coauthored that declaration.
When I asked Nevin about his lack of expertise in the health risks of technology like solar panels, he responded by saying he believes a court would consider him expert enough for his views to hold legal weight.
“In matters such as these, a court ultimately determines the validity of an expert's qualifications,” he said. “I am confident that my background is particularly germane and well-suited to this topic, and that my qualifications and recommendations will withstand judicial review should these matters become subject to litigation in due course.”
For what it is worth, it’s incredibly hard to find evidence that the noise emitted from solar farms creates a risk to public health. Industry says such data is infinitesimal.
There is also at least some apparent temptation of the courts at work in all this, too. Nevin, local leaders, and activists have in public comments about the health risks repeatedly referenced Act 233, a new state law that allows an independent agency to adjudicate conflicts between developers and towns with restrictions on renewable energy projects. As we previously scooped, municipalities and counties are challenging the legality of how that law is being implemented. It is entirely possible that part of Nevin’s crusade against the health impacts of solar on county residents is an attempt to stop the state from usurping the county’s local control.
As opponents of renewable energy look to use the court system in this way, it may be worthwhile for developers to do the same to combat misinformation. Courts can decide when a company is being defamed or unjustly maligned, and the legal system can be an avenue for resolving the vexing issue of conspiracies and misinformation about the health and safety of a renewables project.
Hence why as renewables deployment rises in the U.S., and opposition does too, attorneys like Thomson are going to see a lot more business from developers.
“The law provides some remedies in some circumstances,” Thomson told me. “It’s not a silver bullet. But for specific types of falsehoods, the law can provide an important source of accountability and just as importantly, invoking the law can help people realize that there is a price to be paid for just blatantly and often willfully misleading groups of citizens about this stuff.”
