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Spotlight

Solar’s Got a Better Shot Under Trump – For Now

Here’s where the real risks lie for the solar industry.

Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Solar energy so far is avoiding the Trump-era challenge posed to wind energy. But it’s unclear the good times will continue, as chaos reigns in Washington and threats loom on the horizon.

Last week, Trump issued a 60-day pause on all permits for solar projects on federal lands. Many solar projects are not sited on federal lands, so there’s little Trump could do in the short term to stop those projects. But some utility scale projects definitely are on federal lands in the Southwest, most often in Nevada, where considerable opposition exists in rural, untouched pockets of the state. Several sit in various stages of the permitting process. In fact, there are over 12 gigawatts worth of challenged projects currently planned for the state, according to Heatmap Pro’s database.

Heatmap Pro data on Nevada\u2019s contested projects.

Developers and industry representatives I spoke with believe Trump will lift this pause on permits and let the solar projects flow through the pipeline. EDF Renewables, whose Bonanza solar farm was approaching the end of the permitting process when Trump came into office, told me they “have no reason to believe that the project should not be approved.” Balanced Rock Power, the developer of the Samantha solar project in Nevada which is in the early stages of permitting, told me the company is “continuing to work closely with” agencies “to complete all the major milestones on schedule.”

“President Trump has specifically said that he loves solar – and as energy demand soars, we know that solar is the most efficient and affordable way to add a lot of energy to the grid, fast,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, told me in a statement.

But there’s a quiet unease amongst some in the sector about whether recent actions around permits and federal funding mean the next shoe to drop is going to hit them.

Trump’s got complaints about solar and land use, including those he made in that presidential debate immediately after the “big fan” comment. There was also an interview with Fox News last week where he came out against utility-scale solar projects. “You know what else people don’t like,” Trump told host Sean Hannity. “Those massive solar fields built over land that covers 10 miles by 10 miles. I mean, they’re ridiculous, the whole thing.”

Brendan Bell, a top executive at asset manager Aligned Capital and a former senior official in DOE’s loan programs office, told me the biggest question in solar right now is “whether they can do anything to stop it.”

“If you’re developing a project on BLM land, you’re probably putting that on the backburner,” said Brendan Bell, a top executive at asset manager Aligned Capital. Bell served as director of strategic initiatives for the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office under the Obama administration. “But that’s not the only place we build solar projects.”

Indeed, from a permitting perspective, it may prove quite tricky to undermine solar projects. Even on BLM land. That’s because permitting decisions and even indecision can be litigated. Rarely does the Bureau of Land Management actually deny projects – of any fuel type – so a step change against solar would require a wholescale change to how permitting staff ordinarily operate.

The most serious threat, in my view, is actually whether the Trump administration will take on the “protect farmland” mantle that activists in some states have used to derail large-scale solar projects. Under the Farmlands Protection Policy Act, the Agriculture Department is tasked with minimizing how federal programs impact the conversion of farmland to non-agricultural uses, attorney Bob Greenslade told me in an email. Farmland impacts “may be relevant” now to renewable energy development in any area with a federal nexus, including land use.

And there’s a nascent effort to strip tax credits from renewables projects sited on farmland. On Tuesday, Republican congressman Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin announced he would reintroduce legislation to disqualify renewables projects from receiving tax benefits under the Inflation Reduction Act if their project is on “prime farmland,” a term of art defined by the Agriculture Department.

Mark Fowler, director of government affairs for Ameresco, told me that he believes tax credits and access to federal funds will be a bigger issue for solar than permitting in the immediate term, especially in light of the (now lifted) Trump freeze on discretionary funds. Ameresco is an integrator and developer of renewable energy projects. “The biggest thing right now is uncertainty around the tax credits. The discussion right now is they’re going to change in some form the IRA tax credits. We don’t know what the changes are going to look like.”

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Hotspots

Trump Administration to ‘Reconsider’ Approval for MarWin

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

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Sussex County, Delaware – The Trump administration has confirmed it will revisit permitting decisions for the MarWin offshore wind project off the coast of Maryland, potentially putting the proposal in jeopardy unless blue states and the courts intervene.

  • Justice Department officials admitted the plans in a paragraph tucked inside a filing submitted to a federal court in Delaware this week in litigation brought by a beach house owner opposed to the offshore wind project.
  • DOJ stated in the filing that more time was “necessary as Interior intends to reconsider its [construction and operations plan] approval” for MarWin, and that it plans to “move” for “voluntary remand of that agency action” in a separate case filed by Ocean City, Maryland against the project.
  • “The outcome of Interior’s reconsideration has the potential to affect the Plaintiff’s claims in this case,” the filing stated. “Continuing to litigate this case before any decision is made in the [Ocean City case] would potentially waste considerable time and resources for both the parties and the Court.” As of today, no new filings have been made in the Ocean City case.

2. Northwest Iowa – Locals fighting a wind project spanning multiple counties in northern Iowa are opposing legislation that purports to make renewable development easier in the state.

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Q&A

Should Renewable Energy Companies Sue Trump?

They don’t have much to lose, Heiko Burow, an attorney at Baker & Mackenzie, tells me.

Heiko Burow.
Heatmap Illustration

This week, since this edition of The Fight was so heavy, I tried something a little different: I interviewed one of my readers, Heiko Burow, an attorney with Baker & Mackenzie based in Dallas, Texas. Burow doesn’t work in energy specifically – he’s an intellectual property lawyer – but he’s read many of my scoops over the past few weeks about attacks on renewable energy and had legitimate criticism! Namely, as a lawyer who is passionate about the rule of law, he wanted to send a message to any developers and energy wonks reading me to use the legal system more often as a tool against attacks on their field.

The following conversation has been abridged for clarity. Let’s dive in.

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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.

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