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Inside a solar fight in the “cowboy capital of the world.”
An hour northwest of San Antonio, Texas, the small town of Bandera is home to fewer than 1,000 people. Complete with old-timey heritage buildings from the Old West, the town markets itself as a ranching tourism destination and the “cowboy capital of the world.”
And some residents really don’t want the solar farm coming to town: Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project, which would produce 132 megawatts of power. That’s enough renewable electricity to fuel almost 23,000 homes.
When the project first appeared on homeowners’ doorsteps, citizens concerned about building anything at industrial scale in their bucolic community rejected a local tax abatement and began speaking to local media. Eventually, roughly a dozen people living near the proposed Rio Lago site filed a lawsuit in state court seeking damages for alleged sediment runoff, along with a laundry list of other complaints. The state court judge was sympathetic to the individuals in Bandera, ordered construction to stop and sanctioned Pine Gate when residents said the company appeared to continue work on the project. The case is now pending in federal court.
Taken together this outcry, lawsuit, and all of the resulting local news coverage coverage add up to a crucial test: Can a handful of people block carbon-free power to so many homes?
In this circumstance, probably not. Last week, the federal judge now overseeing the case – Richard Farrer, who was appointed under Trump in 2017 – told the aggrieved homeowners and their lawyer that while the allegations of damages may still proceed to trial, there was “not sufficient evidence of imminent irreparable harm to support” an order to stop construction, according to a transcript of the hearing.
But still, this case still fascinates. That’s because despite Texas’ conservative political leaning the Lone Star state is a panacea for renewables development. It produces 16% of the nation’s total renewable energy but accounts for only 2.5% of the contested projects, restrictive ordinances, and moratoriums in Heatmap Pro’s database. Part of the reason Texas is so receptive is that energy production overall is pretty welcome – when you’re so used to oil rigs, a solar farm isn’t that big of a deal. For its part, Pine Gate clearly thinks it’s a great place to build as the company claims to have forty projects at various stages in the state.
The case of Bandera and the Rio Lago solar project ultimately illustrates NIMBYism – historically understood as more of an issue amongst liberals – can occur in even the most staunchly conservative parts of the country: the town is represented in Congress by Rep. Chip Roy, who has a 96% lifetime score from the Heritage Foundation’s political arm and a month ago called to fully defund the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Ultimately, while renewable energy and decarbonization capital is pouring into culturally red areas across the U.S., this conflict demonstrates how a backlash can really rear its ugly head.
Jennifer Rosenblatt, a lawyer representing the homeowners opposed to the solar farm, told me her litigation isn’t “anti-solar” and “simply a construction issue.” But she acknowledged the residents are motivated by a simple and familiar adage: “Nobody wants it in their backyard.”
“All things being equal, they don’t want it there,” Rosenblatt said. “Everybody wants to say it’s a lawsuit about ‘not in my backyard,’ but in Texas you can’t control what somebody does on their property next door. There’s no lawsuit about that.”
We’ll keep you updated on the status of this lawsuit in future editions of The Fight.
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Inside a wild race sparked by a solar farm in Knox County, Ohio.
The most important climate election you’ve never heard of? Your local county commissioner.
County commissioners are usually the most powerful governing individuals in a county government. As officials closer to community-level planning than, say a sitting senator, commissioners wind up on the frontlines of grassroots opposition to renewables. And increasingly, property owners that may be personally impacted by solar or wind farms in their backyards are gunning for county commissioner positions on explicitly anti-development platforms.
Take the case of newly-elected Ohio county commissioner – and Christian social media lifestyle influencer – Drenda Keesee.
In March, Keesee beat fellow Republican Thom Collier in a primary to become a GOP nominee for a commissioner seat in Knox County, Ohio. Knox, a ruby red area with very few Democratic voters, is one of the hottest battlegrounds in the war over solar energy on prime farmland and one of the riskiest counties in the country for developers, according to Heatmap Pro’s database. But Collier had expressed openness to allowing new solar to be built on a case-by-case basis, while Keesee ran on a platform focused almost exclusively on blocking solar development. Collier ultimately placed third in the primary, behind Keesee and another anti-solar candidate placing second.
Fighting solar is a personal issue for Keesee (pronounced keh-see, like “messy”). She has aggressively fought Frasier Solar – a 120 megawatt solar project in the country proposed by Open Road Renewables – getting involved in organizing against the project and regularly attending state regulator hearings. Filings she submitted to the Ohio Power Siting Board state she owns a property at least somewhat adjacent to the proposed solar farm. Based on the sheer volume of those filings this is clearly her passion project – alongside preaching and comparing gay people to Hitler.
Yesterday I spoke to Collier who told me the Frasier Solar project motivated Keesee’s candidacy. He remembered first encountering her at a community meeting – “she verbally accosted me” – and that she “decided she’d run against me because [the solar farm] was going to be next to her house.” In his view, he lost the race because excitement and money combined to produce high anti-solar turnout in a kind of local government primary that ordinarily has low campaign spending and is quite quiet. Some of that funding and activity has been well documented.
“She did it right: tons of ground troops, people from her church, people she’s close with went door-to-door, and they put out lots of propaganda. She got them stirred up that we were going to take all the farmland and turn it into solar,” he said.
Collier’s takeaway from the race was that local commissioner races are particularly vulnerable to the sorts of disinformation, campaign spending and political attacks we’re used to seeing more often in races for higher offices at the state and federal level.
“Unfortunately it has become this,” he bemoaned, “fueled by people who have little to no knowledge of what we do or how we do it. If you stir up enough stuff and you cry out loud enough and put up enough misinformation, people will start to believe it.”
Races like these are happening elsewhere in Ohio and in other states like Georgia, where opposition to a battery plant mobilized Republican primaries. As the climate world digests the federal election results and tries to work backwards from there, perhaps at least some attention will refocus on local campaigns like these.
And more of the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Madison County, Missouri – A giant battery material recycling plant owned by Critical Mineral Recovery exploded and became engulfed in flames last week, creating a potential Vineyard Wind-level PR headache for energy storage.
2. Benton County, Washington State – Governor Jay Inslee finally got state approvals finished for Scout Clean Energy’s massive Horse Heaven wind farm after a prolonged battle over project siting, cultural heritage management, and bird habitat.
3. Fulton County, Georgia – A large NextEra battery storage facility outside of Atlanta is facing a lawsuit that commingles usual conflicts over building these properties with environmental justice concerns, I’ve learned.
Here’s what else I’m watching…
In Colorado, Weld County commissioners approved part of one of the largest solar projects in the nation proposed by Balanced Rock Power.
In New Mexico, a large solar farm in Sandoval County proposed by a subsidiary of U.S. PCR Investments on land typically used for cattle is facing consternation.
In Pennsylvania, Schuylkill County commissioners are thinking about new solar zoning restrictions.
In Kentucky, Lost City Renewables is still wrestling with local concerns surrounding a 1,300-acre solar farm in rural Muhlenberg County.
In Minnesota, Ranger Power’s Gopher State solar project is starting to go through the public hearing process.
In Texas, Trina Solar – a company media reports have linked to China – announced it sold a large battery plant the day after the election. It was acquired by Norwegian company FREYR.What happened this week in climate and energy policy, beyond the federal election results.
1. It’s the election, stupid – We don’t need to retread who won the presidential election this week (or what it means for the Inflation Reduction Act). But there were also big local control votes worth watching closely.
2. Michigan lawsuit watch – Michigan has a serious lawsuit brewing over its law taking some control of renewable energy siting decisions away from municipalities.