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Will this renewable energy powerhouse become the first state to ban renewable energy?
There’s a nascent, concerted effort to make Oklahoma the first state to ban new renewable energy projects. And it’s picking up steam.
Across the U.S., activism against wind and solar energy has only grown in intensity, power, and scope in tandem with the recent renewables boom. This is in direct contrast to hopes many in the climate movement had that these technologies would become more popular as they entered communities historically hostile to the idea of switching away from fossil fuels. If anything, grassroots angst toward the energy transition has only surged in many pockets of the country since passage of the nation’s first climate law – Inflation Reduction Act – in 2022.
Nowhere is this more true than Oklahoma, which on paper resembles a breadbasket of possibilities for the “green” economy. Oklahoma is the nation’s third largest generator of wind energy, home to a burgeoning solar energy sector, a potential hydrogen hub, and maybe even the nation’s first refinery for cobalt, a rare metal used in electric vehicles. Yet yesterday, hundreds of people flocked to Oklahoma City, filled a giant hall in the state’s capitol building to the brim, and rallied for the state’s governor Kevin Stitt to issue an executive order to stop new wind and solar energy facilities from being built.
“Welcome Oklahoma, for braving the cold out there into this very warm and receiving Capitol. And y’know what? Our warmth today was not brought to us by green energy,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond told the rally audience.
It’s exceedingly likely these folks won’t get an executive order any time soon. Oklahoma Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, has embraced these technologies as job creators. “Oklahoma is an oil and gas state through and through, but we also generate about 47% of our electricity from renewable sources,” he wrote on X in August. “I just don’t think the government should pick winners and losers or force us to choose between one or the other.” Weeks ago, he signed a memorandum of understanding between the state and the nation of Denmark to collaborate more on wind energy.
But the political gusts are blowing in the direction of a ban. Exhibit A: Drummond, who it’s rumored may run to replace Stitt and who at the rally pledged to work with legislators to pass a bill ending the deal with “quasi-socialist” Denmark. The rally also featured Oklahoma’s Education Secretary Ryan Walters, whose name has also been included in gubernatorial chatter.
This uprising in Oklahoma has been happening for quite some time, without much fanfare due to a persistent and pernicious news desert problem in the state (and many others). Like other states, it is becoming more commonplace for towns and counties there to face pressure to support moratoriums against developing new projects, and GOP lawmakers are also increasingly facing primaries over offering any support to wind or solar energy, or even just remaining neutral on whether projects get built. One such casualty in the last election cycle was Kevin Wallace, the GOP chair of the Appropriations and Budget Committee in the statehouse, who was dethroned by a political newcomer – Jim Shaw, who ran heavily on anti-renewables policies, including a statewide moratorium.
“It’s a groundswell,” said Pam Kingfisher, an environmental activist in northeast Oklahoma. Kingfisher is a Democrat but she has her own concerns with the environmental impacts that wind turbines could have in her community, the town of Kansas. So she’s grateful for this uprising.
“They’re attacking their own people and being very effective and I’m standing back going, ‘hey yes, take them on.’”
Suffice it to say, these activists feel emboldened by the primary wins and Trump’s election. Charity Linch, chair of the Oklahoma chapter of the Republican National Committee, told me she doesn’t believe the “pro-renewable Republican” will exist much longer in the state.
“I don’t believe that’s going to continue in Oklahoma,” Linch told me. “If they haven’t figured it out yet, they will very soon.”
Linch is the proud founder of Freedom Brigades, a grassroots network of activists with members in several states. The Freedom Brigade chapters for two counties conflicted over wind – McIntosh and Pittsburg – were instrumental in organizing the rally. Linch said Freedom Brigades also helped support some of the successful primary challengers in this past election cycle, and that her members were partially responsible for the Oklahoma GOP censuring Sen. James Lankford last year over a bipartisan border deal in Congress – causing the bill to die.
From talking to Linch, it’s clear to me that renewable developers should pay close attention to the Oklahoma uprising. So should Washington, because as talk in Congress proceeds toward changing the Inflation Reduction Act, rest assured some of these people will contact their members of Congress when the time comes. And you should expect the same from the myriad of anti-renewables activists in other states fighting solar and wind projects in their own backyards.
Getting Red In The Face
Why is this rebellion happening in Oklahoma? Well, if you ask Oklahomans, they’ll count the reasons.
Activists involved in planning the rally told me the biggest reason for the uproar was that solar and wind projects aren’t bringing the ample jobs developers and policymakers promise, making their presence in communities more difficult to stomach. Others point to environmental concerns, from the impacts these projects can have on species to the chemicals used to make them. Like Saundra Traywick, a donkey farmer who attended the rally and author of a Change.org petition supporting a state renewables ban that has more than 3,000 signatures. The petition claims wind turbines present “hazards to the health, safety, and welfare of the people.”
“They resort to calling us names instead of listening to us,” Traywick told me. “None of us wanted to get involved in any of this. We didn’t want to be involved in politics. These are farmers that are dealing with freezing temperatures,” referencing the temperature outside the rally.
There’s a serious issue of tribal opposition, given a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that found nearly half of all lands in Oklahoma fall under some form of tribal sovereignty. As Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin explained last year, this means developers may also need to get mineral rights approvals from tribal government bodies. Two weeks ago, a federal judge ordered the removal of 84 wind turbines on those grounds, stating the developer Enel Green Power failed to get adequate permission from the Osage Nation.
Some involved in this push for a renewables ban are also open about another rationale: They want to help oil and gas production, a key source of employment in the state.
“Why are we as a state being forced to fund our own demise essentially, with our federal taxpayer dollars, to prop up an industry that’s literally killing the backbone industry of our state, which is oil and gas?” Shaw said on Breitbart’s Conservative Review podcast in December.
To anyone who believes, as the vast majority of scientists say, that climate change is real and to avert catastrophe we must quickly build an energy grid that produces far fewer carbon emissions, these may all look like terrible reasons.
But if you don’t believe that climate change is real, or you believe it’s an overrated problem… renewables are just a much harder sell.
“Most of us do not believe we need to reduce our CO2 to begin with,” NeAnne Clinton, an activist fighting a large NextEra solar-plus-battery project in Garfield County, Oklahoma, told me. “We know that it’s a scam and we don’t support it. And we don’t support using our taxpayer money for something that we didn’t have a voice in.”
Cheyenne Branscum, chair of Sierra Club’s Oklahoma chapter, told me it is difficult for supporters of renewable energy to counter this insurgent populist movement against the sector. Part of the dilemma is that environmental activism itself is seen by many of the state’s most red-blooded Republicans as a “radical” act, so if climate advocates were to organize counter protests it would likely backfire. When asked how her organization and others could best deal with the anti-renewables sentiment rising in her state, she talked about education programs – not confrontation.
“We’re not going to change anything at the state capital,” Branscum told me. “All a counter rally is going to do is make them have more opportunities to make us into a meme. They’re going to have some angry picture out there with a sign and be labeled some crazy radical that doesn’t care about their community. And it is unfortunately a hurdle.”
The Sooners’ Warning Shot
The Oklahoma rebellion should be cold comfort for anyone who buys into one of the implicit political principles behind the country’s first climate law – the Inflation Reduction Act.
Whether folks in D.C. want to admit it or not, the American anti-renewables revolution is rising up as Donald Trump retakes the White House and it is going to try and make its own impact on the Inflation Reduction Act. While much ado has been made about how the overwhelming majority of monetary benefits from the IRA are supporting investments in Republican-controlled states, as veteran lobbyist Frank Maisano put it to me last year, “Businesses will support many things that they have their tentacles into and Republicans will support many things that are going on in their districts that constituents like.”
“The reality is, if you’re going to try to repeal it,” Maisano said, “you’re going to have to do it through Congress and a lot of the action in the energy transition is in Republican districts. It becomes a constituent issue.”
What if many Republican constituents simply don’t like these new investments, in spite of the promises of jobs or tax benefits? What happens if Republicans in Congress are primaried simply for allowing solar and wind to keep getting federal tax breaks?
None of this surprises Nathan Jensen, a Texas University professor specializing in resource politics, who believes Oklahoma will only be the first to face a movement for a state-wide ban on new renewables. Just look at Texas where, like Oklahoma, the energy sector has become a panacea for wind and solar energy but many GOP policymakers have turned on economic development packages for new renewables. A state-wide ban hasn’t been discussed yet, but Jensen can imagine the idea gaining traction.
Jensen said he believes the organizing on platforms like Facebook only tells part of the story. Clearly, he says, a lot of people are joining that cause because the industry’s grown large enough that people are hearing from the farm or town next to theirs about solar and wind projects. And whether climate advocates want to hear it or not, these people are not loving what they’re hearing. Solar and wind projects don’t create that many jobs after they’re built. They do create a flurry of construction, but that’s a form of labor that leaves when it’s done and is often resented by neighbors, leading to disputes over dust, noise, or water. Then there’s the tax abatements for developers, which aggrieved residents see as taxpayer dollars going to large companies without their say – precisely the message gaining traction in Oklahoma.
This means places that seem safe for renewable developers are no longer safe and companies need to be really careful about how they approach community benefits. It’s not something you can just say – you really need to deliver what you promise.
“I know there’s a lot of news about organized anti-solar, which clearly happens, but also there’s this organic opposition that happens where it’s like, ‘You’re asking for how much from our school district?’” Jensen said. “Some of it is organized Facebook groups against solar but I think there is a lot of frustration.”
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A conversation with Mary King, a vice president handling venture strategy at Aligned Capital
Today’s conversation is with Mary King, a vice president handling venture strategy at Aligned Capital, which has invested in developers like Summit Ridge and Brightnight. I reached out to Mary as a part of the broader range of conversations I’ve had with industry professionals since it has become clear Republicans in Congress will be taking a chainsaw to the Inflation Reduction Act. I wanted to ask her about investment philosophies in this trying time and how the landscape for putting capital into renewable energy has shifted. But Mary’s quite open with her view: these technologies aren’t going anywhere.
The following conversation has been lightly edited and abridged for clarity.
How do you approach working in this field given all the macro uncertainties?
It’s a really fair question. One, macro uncertainties aside, when you look at the levelized cost of energy report Lazard releases it is clear that there are forms of clean energy that are by far the cheapest to deploy. There are all kinds of reasons to do decarbonizing projects that aren’t clean energy generation: storage, resiliency, energy efficiency – this is massively cost saving. Like, a lot of the methane industry [exists] because there’s value in not leaking methane. There’s all sorts of stuff you can do that you don’t need policy incentives for.
That said, the policy questions are unavoidable. You can’t really ignore them and I don’t want to say they don’t matter to the industry – they do. It’s just, my belief in this being an investable asset class and incredibly important from a humanity perspective is unwavering. That’s the perspective I’ve been taking. This maybe isn’t going to be the most fun market, investing in decarbonizing things, but the sense of purpose and the belief in the underlying drivers of the industry outweigh that.
With respect to clean energy development, and the investment class working in development, how have things changed since January and the introduction of these bills that would pare back the IRA?
Both investors and companies are worried. There’s a lot more political and policy engagement. We’re seeing a lot of firms and organizations getting involved. I think companies are really trying to find ways to structure around the incentives. Companies and developers, I think everybody is trying to – for lack of a better term – future-proof themselves against the worst eventuality.
One of the things I’ve been personally thinking about is that the way developers generally make money is, you have a financier that’s going to buy a project from them, and the financier is going to have a certain investment rate of return, or IRR. So ITC [investment tax credit] or no ITC, that IRR is going to be the same. And the developer captures the difference.
My guess – and I’m not incredibly confident yet – but I think the industry just focuses on being less ITC dependent. Finding the projects that are juicier regardless of the ITC.
The other thing is that as drafts come out for what we’re expecting to see, it’s gone from bad to terrible to a little bit better. We’ll see what else happens as we see other iterations.
How are you evaluating companies and projects differently today, compared to how you were maybe before it was clear the IRA would be targeted?
Let’s say that we’re looking at a project developer and they have a series of projects. Right now we’re thinking about a few things. First, what assets are these? It’s not all ITC and PTC. A lot of it is other credits. Going through and asking, how at risk are these credits? And then, once we know how at risk those credits are we apply it at a project level.
This also raises a question of whether you’re going to be able to find as many projects. Is there going to be as much demand if you’re not able to get to an IRR? Is the industry going to pay that?
What gives you optimism in this moment?
I’ll just look at the levelized cost of energy and looking at the unsubsidized tables say these are the projects that make sense and will still get built. Utility-scale solar? Really attractive. Some of these next-gen geothermal projects, I think those are going to be cost effective.
The other thing is that the cost of battery storage is just declining so rapidly and it’s continuing to decline. We are as a country expected to compare the current price of these technologies in perpetuity to the current price of oil and gas, which is challenging and where the technologies have not changed materially. So we’re not going to see the cost decline we’re going to see in renewables.
And more news around renewable energy conflicts.
1. Nantucket County, Massachusetts – The SouthCoast offshore wind project will be forced to abandon its existing power purchase agreements with Massachusetts and Rhode Island if the Trump administration’s wind permitting freeze continues, according to court filings submitted last week.
2. Tippacanoe County, Indiana – This county has now passed a full solar moratorium but is looking at grandfathering one large utility-scale project: RWE and Geenex’s Rainbow Trout solar farm.
3. Columbia County, Wisconsin – An Alliant wind farm named after this county is facing its own pushback as the developer begins the state permitting process and is seeking community buy-in through public info hearings.
4. Washington County, Arkansas – It turns out even mere exploration for a wind project out in this stretch of northwest Arkansas can get you in trouble with locals.
5. Wagoner County, Oklahoma – A large NextEra solar project has been blocked by county officials despite support from some Republican politicians in the Sooner state.
6. Skagit County, Washington – If you’re looking for a ray of developer sunshine on a cloudy day, look no further than this Washington State county that’s bucking opposition to a BESS facility.
7. Orange County, California – A progressive Democratic congressman is now opposing a large battery storage project in his district and talking about battery fire risks, the latest sign of a populist revolt in California against BESS facilities.
Permitting delays and missed deadlines are bedeviling solar developers and activist groups alike. What’s going on?
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.”