The Fight

Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

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.”

This article is exclusively
for Heatmap Plus subscribers.

Go deeper inside the politics, projects, and personalities
shaping the energy transition.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Spotlight

Birds Could Be the Anti-Wind Trump Card

How the Migratory Bird Treaty Act could become the administration’s ultimate weapon against wind farms.

A golden eagle and wind turbines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Trump administration has quietly opened the door to strictly enforcing a migratory bird protection law in a way that could cast a legal cloud over wind farms across the country.

As I’ve chronicled for Heatmap, the Interior Department over the past month expanded its ongoing investigation of the wind industry’s wildlife impacts to go after turbines for killing imperiled bald and golden eagles, sending voluminous records requests to developers. We’ve discussed here how avian conservation activists and even some former government wildlife staff are reporting spikes in golden eagle mortality in areas with operating wind projects. Whether these eagle deaths were allowable under the law – the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act – is going to wind up being a question for regulators and courts if Interior progresses further against specific facilities. Irrespective of what one thinks about the merits of wind energy, it’s extremely likely that a federal government already hostile to wind power will use the law to apply even more pressure on developers.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

New Mexico’s NIMBYs Vow to Fight Again in Santa Fe

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

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Santa Fe County, New Mexico – County commissioners approved the controversial AES Rancho Viejo solar project after months of local debate, which was rendered more intense by battery fire concerns.

  • Opposition to the nearly 100-megawatt solar project in the Santa Fe area was entirely predictable, per Heatmap Pro data, which shows overwhelming support for renewable energy in theory, yet an above average chance of NIMBYism arising. That genuine NIMBY quotient appears resilient, prompting even climate activist Bill McKibben to weigh in on the loud volume of the opposition.
  • The commission approved the project’s necessary permit on Tuesday after local fire officials cleared it on safety grounds. Opponents, however, led by an organization named Clean Energy Coalition for Santa Fe County, reportedly plan to sue over the approval, anyway.

2. Nantucket, Massachusetts – The latest episode of the Vineyard Wind debacle has dropped, and it appears the offshore wind project’s team is now playing ball with the vacation town.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Q&A

Trump’s Take on Environmental Review Has Some Silver Linings

Talking NEPA implementation and permitting reform with Pamela Goodwin, an environmental lawyer at Saul Ewing LLP.

Pamela Goodwin.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

This week’s conversation is with Pamela Goodwin, an environmental lawyer with Saul Ewing LLP. I reached out to her to chat about permitting because, well, when is that not on all of our minds these days. I was curious, though, whether Trump’s reforms to National Environmental Policy Act regulations and recent court rulings on the law’s implementation would help renewables in any way, given how much attention has been paid to “permitting reform” over the years. To my surprise, there are some silver linings here – though you’ll have to squint to see them.

The following chat was lightly edited for clarity.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow