The Fight

Sign In or Create an Account.

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

Spotlight

Anti-Wind Activists Have a Big Ask for the Big Man

The Trump administration is now being lobbied to nix offshore wind projects already under construction.

Trump and offshore wind.

Anti-wind activists have joined with well-connected figures in conservative legal and energy circles to privately lobby the Trump administration to undo permitting decisions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to documents obtained by Heatmap.

Representatives of conservative think tanks and legal nonprofits — including the Caesar Rodney Institute, the Heartland Institute and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT — sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum dated February 11 requesting that the Trump administration “immediately revoke” letters from NOAA to 11 offshore wind projects authorizing “incidental takes,” a term of regulatory art referencing accidental and permissible harassment, injury, or potential deaths under federal endangered species and mammal protection laws. The letter lays out a number of perceived issues with how those approvals have historically been issued for offshore wind companies and claims the government has improperly analyzed the cumulative effects of adding offshore wind to the ocean’s existing industrialization. NOAA oversees marine species protection.

Keep reading...Show less
Hotspots

The Great Battery PR Fire of 2025

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

Renewable energy fights

1. Monterey County, California – The Moss Landing battery fire is now the big renewables PR crisis we should all be watching, even with Trump 2.0 going on.

  • Whereas before a battery fire news cycle might last a week, this story’s now in thermal runaway, as The New York Times has taken to profiling the sick and injured. Affected residents have now sued Vistra Energy, operator of the Moss Landing battery storage facility, for damages. Famed environmentalist Erin Brockovich is now involved, working in tandem with victims’ attorneys. Nearby San Luis Obispo and Orange counties have now issued temporary moratoriums on new battery storage.
  • It’s worth considering how much of this is unique to Moss Landing. The residents’ legal comaplint takes aim at the use of nickel manganese cobalt batteries (NCM) for storage, as opposed to lithium iron-phosphate (LFP) chemistries. NCM is an historically popular battery chemistry used in consumer electronics and electric vehicles … but not as often with storage.
  • “Because they are safer, most energy storage projects around the world have been transitioning to LFP batteries,” the complaint states. “NMC batteries undergo thermal runaway at a lower temperature and release more energy from decomposition, while LFP batteries can withstand higher temperatures than NCM batteries before beginning the thermal runaway process.”
  • The lawsuit also claims the fire suppression system at Moss Landing was faulty and contrasts its behavior with a fire at a “neighboring Tesla project, which used safer and less volatile LFP batteries,” and which it says was “quickly extinguished.”

2. Portage County, Wisconsin – Doral Renewables’ Vista Sands solar project is facing a prolonged legal fight with the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, a state outdoor recreation and wildlife advocacy group. At the center of the conflict is a bird that’s long bedeviled developers of all stripes: the greater prairie chicken.

Keep reading...Show less
Policy Watch

Building Renewable Energy on Castles of Sand

A look at the biggest news around renewable energy policy this week.

Wind turbines

1. The anti-renewable locavore – Republican lawmakers are aiming to empower localities to block renewables projects, a similar scene to what’s played out in Ohio, where state legislators gave towns the power to have a final word on development instead of state-led entities.

2. Sgamma thoughts – Trump selected Kathleen Sgamma, head of the pro-oil Western Energy Alliance, to head the Bureau of Land Management. What does this mean for renewables developers? It’s hard to tell because so much of her time was spent on a single mission: liberating as much oil from the ground as possible.

Keep reading...Show less
Q&A

Biofuels Group Says Trump Has Industry In Standstill

A conversation with Geoff Cooper, head of the Renewable Fuels Association

Geoff Cooper

Today’s conversation is with Geoff Cooper, head of the Renewable Fuels Association, the most powerful biofuels trade organization in D.C. And he’s not happy.

In Cooper’s view, the Biden administration left the IRA’s tax credit supporting lower-carbon jet fuel unfinished despite releasing guidance days before Trump entered office (here’s an explainer on that problem). Not to mention the chaos of Trump’s early days has, as Cooper put it, thrown the brakes on the American biofuels sector’s foray into aviation. Cooper and I have a history going back years, and almost a month into Trump 2.0, I thought it was time we had a chat about how solar and wind aren’t the only sectors left out in the cold right now.

Keep reading...Show less