The Most At-Risk Projects of the Energy Transition

A completed Environmental Impact Statement is typically a major step forward for a big energy project, but when the Lava Ridge wind project’s EIS was completed by the Bureau of Land Management in June, it only kicked up more opposition.

The project had planned for over 1,000 megawatts of capacity generated by 400 turbines that could be as tall as 740 feet, spanning almost 200,000 acres. The BLM’s “preferred alternative” would reduce the project by about half and shrinking the tallest turbine to 660 feet. The reduction in size and scope was meant to satisfy a number of different interests in south central Idaho, including minimizing the visibility of the turbines from the Minidoka National Historic Site, the site of a Japanese internment camp.

But the BLM’s downsizing did not convince political opposition to let up. Most of Idaho’s high profile politicians, including its Republican governor, lieutenant governor, and both its United States senators have been vocally opposed to the project, as have several local officials and the state legislature. Idaho’s attorney general, Raul Labrador, continues to fight the project, filing two lawsuits just in September.

The controversy also helped trigger a moratorium on wind and solar farms in a nearby county, impacting two proposed solar farms that would have generated 900 megawatts of clean energy. —Matthew

Summit Carbon Solutions is trying to build what would be the largest pipeline designed to carry carbon dioxide in the United States. The project would collect CO2 captured from ethanol plants throughout the five states that it passes through and deliver the liquified greenhouse gas to an injection well in North Dakota where the CO2 would be sequestered underground.

To date, the developer has signed up 57 separate ethanol plants to hook up to the line. Summit says the pipeline will enable ethanol producers to access new, low-carbon fuel markets, including for “sustainable aviation fuel.” But the project faces mounting opposition from a diverse range of stakeholders, including landowners who don’t want it to pass through their property, environmental groups like the Sierra Club who view it as a “false solution” to climate change, and Republican legislators who question the project’s merits on the grounds that climate change is merely a “hypothesis.” Presidential nominee Donald Trump has also said he’d help fight the pipeline if elected.

The fight escalated this summer after the Iowa Utilities Commission granted Summit the right to use eminent domain to build on the properties of unwilling landowners. Now, many of the opposition groups, including a group called Republican Legislative Intervenors for Justice, are suing to reverse the decision. The Iowa Commission also granted Summit a permit to begin construction, but it’s contingent on the company getting permits in North and South Dakota first — both of which rejected the project the first time Summit applied. The company has since altered its route in South Dakota and reapplied, but its fate in that state is also dependent on a measure on the November 5 ballot that would allow state regulators to override local ordinances and zoning laws designed to keep the pipeline out. Meanwhile, the company is also still awaiting approvals in Minnesota and Nebraska, as well as a permit to drill a Class VI CO2 storage well in North Dakota. The process of acquiring permits and easements has taken so long that one of the project’s suppliers, a pipe welding company, has also sued Summit for delaying production. —Emily

Atlantic Shores is a large proposed offshore wind farm that would be built about 10-20 miles off the coast of northern New Jersey. It is being developed by a 50-50 joint venture subsidiary of EDF Renewables and Shell. The farm consists of two main areas – Atlantic Shores South and Atlantic Shores North. In July, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management fully permitted Atlantic Shores South, which is projected to generate up to 2,800 megawatts of electricity. In April, BOEM announced its intent to prepare an environmental impact statement for Atlantic Shores North.

Developers estimate Atlantic Shores turbines could provide power to homes as early as 2027. Unfortunately, Atlantic Shores is now facing a focused activist campaign that – rightfully or wrongly – claims to have helped behead its once would-be neighbors Ocean Wind 1 and 2, which were canceled last year by Orsted citing inflationary pressures. One must wonder if the stream of noisy lawsuits and hearings will produce knock-on effects that undermine the project’s future. —Jael

On July 1, the Huntington County Board of Commissioners said they were letting a moratorium on solar development go into effect. The moratorium followed months of meetings with the public after a proposal for a moratorium was drafted in April due to “proposed large scale solar projects” that could “result in the loss of thousands of acres of existing farmland.” The moratorium will last until 2025.

The impetus for the moratorium was Paddlefish Solar, a proposed 350-megawatt project on land in Wells and Huntington counties, in a rural area of Indiana south of Fort Wayne. At public meetings hosted to discuss the project, local residents had familiar concerns, including property values and viewsheds, namely whether or not they would see the solar arrays, according to WPTA , a Fort Wayne television station. EDF has pointed to local benefits the project will provide, including an estimated $90 million of tax revenue for the counties over the life of the project.

The project demonstrates the promise and peril of siting solar on agricultural land. On the one hand, agricultural land makes sense: it’s flat and often sunny. And, as EDF has pointed out, using farmland for energy is hardly new, especially in the Midwest, where millions of acres of farmland are devoted to growing corn for ethanol. On the other hand, communities based around agriculture are still often wary of converting farmland into clean energy production, even as landowners benefit from lease payments. In fact, agricultural areas represent roughly 40% of all the moratoriums and restrictive ordinances targeting renewables in Heatmap Pro’s database.

EDF estimates that construction will begin in 2026 or 2027 and will be completed in 2028. The company first applied for interconnection in 2019. —Matthew

At a proposed length of 780 miles, Grain Belt Express would be one of the country’s largest proposed “merchant” lines — a power line built not by a local utility to service its customers, but by a private developer to sell clean energy to booming power markets. The project, which was bought by the Chicago-based Invenergy in 2018, hopes to connect Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. It has already survived much: It has overcome three separate “no” votes in the Missouri Public Service Commission, defeated a last-ditch plot to kill it in the Missouri state legislature, and prevailed in that state’s Supreme Court. Along the way, it modified its plans, promising a 36-mile spur that will deliver 2,500 megawatts to Missouri. Invenergy has received final approval to build Phase 1 of the project, which will link Kansas and Missouri and could begin construction in 2025. But it’s still fighting to build Phase 2, which will pick up in Missouri and carry on to Indiana. In August, a federal court reversed a key Illinois regulatory approval, creating yet another obstacle for the long-suffering line. —Robinson

AES’ proposed Seguro battery energy storage facility in north San Diego County, California, is a keystone species for the future of this crucial decarb sector. Seguro offers up to 320 megawatts of electricity capacity but is having incredible trouble getting the consent of local officials and neighboring landowners to build at its desired site following a string of headline-grabbing lithium battery fires, including at energy storage facilities. With opposition focused on the project’s proximity to homes and a local hospital as well as the area’s history with wildfires, the project is still going through the public scoping process with county regulators. The proposal also helped trigger the creation of new local standards for battery storage. In other words, this project exemplifies why building battery storage is getting increasingly difficult. —Jael

Plug Power began construction on a hydrogen production facility in Genesee County in late 2021, but progress has come in fits and starts. In April, the Fish and Wildlife Service revoked a key permit to build a wastewater pipeline that would service the facility. The decision came after the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, a tribe that uses neighboring lands for hunting and fishing, filed a lawsuit against the federal agency for approving a right-of-way permit for the pipeline. Plug Power has since halted construction on the site and has not said when it will resume.

The construction pause may also be related to the company’s poor financials. Investors are currently going after the company with a class action lawsuit alleging that it misled investors about various aspects of its business and project development. There’s also the risk the plant could end up being ineligible for critical federal tax credits for “clean” hydrogen. —Emily

Maryland wants more data centers. Northern Virginia has more data centers than it knows what to do with. Both areas will need more electricity — and so earlier this year, PJM, the local grid operator, awarded a $424 million contract to the New Jersey utility PSEG to build a new transmission line that can ferry electrons from a Pennsylvania nuclear plant into Maryland and points south. The Piedmont Reliability Project would be a 70-mile transmission line that could bring power from Pennsylvania through Baltimore, Frederick, and Carroll counties; eventually, the line would continue into northern Virginia.

But residents and leaders in some of the state’s more rural areas have rebelled against the line, citing the risk of eminent domain and purported environmental damage. It became a campaign issue in July when Larry Hogan, the GOP senate candidate and former governor, came out against the line, accusing it of posing a “devastating impact for homes, farms and communities.” One farmer at a crowded community meeting held up a sign alluding to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission: “Don’t FERC with my farm.” The irony in all of this: The project hasn’t even been proposed to the state yet, much less to the federal government. —Robinson

Off the coast of Maryland, the Skipjack offshore wind project is in a precarious situation. Orsted, the developer, announced in January it would “reposition” the proposed wind farm; that it had indefinitely postponed work; and that its agreements with the state were no longer economical.

Why? Orsted made this decision around the same time it halted Ocean Wind, so inflation and cost pressures may be to blame. But there’s also high levels of local opposition to offshore wind in Maryland’s shore communities, as evidenced by Ocean City’s legal threats against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for approving another offshore wind project managed by U.S. Wind. According to Heatmap Pro data, Skipjack faces among the highest level of community resentment of any offshore wind project in process today.

We’re watching to see what happens next here. In May, the state enacted legislation to allow renewable energy credits allocated to Orsted elsewhere and named U.S. Wind as a potential recipient. Does that mean a project cancellation, a contract renegotiation, or an asset acquisition may be on the horizon? Time will tell. —Jael

Can you build out over a gigawatt of solar capacity on private land without threatening the prairie chicken? That’s the question that’s plagued the Vista Sands Solar Farm, a planned project in Portage County, Wisconsin. The 1,300 megawatt project would be by far the biggest solar project in the state if it’s approved.

While the project is set to be developed on private land, it may still lead “to functional habitat loss,” as the greater prairie chicken may seek to avoid the energy infrastructure adjacent to its habitat, according to the environmental impact statement prepared by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources , which recommended shrinking the project.

The vast majority of public comments on the project referenced the greater prairie chicken. Conservation groups have pressed for even greater setbacks between the protected areas and the project. But the developer, Doral Renewables, has argued that reducing the size of the project could force them to build nearer to residential and cultural areas they’ve sought to avoid.

The project so far has been able to win some support from the local communities it would be sited near, promising “millions of dollars” in direct payments to local governments when the project is up and running as well as lease payments to landowners. Many environmental groups have also rallied to support the project.

The project is currently before the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, which approves large scale energy projects and the final decision is estimated to arrive in about a month, according to Katie Nekola, general counsel of Clean Wisconsin, an environmental group that supports the project.

“I don’t know which way it’s going to go. They could decide to cut some arrays out and make people happy,” Nekola said. —Matthew