An Ohio solar project overcomes local opposition and misinformation

A contested solar agrivoltaics project avoided having its permit denied by Ohio regulators, likely thanks to the neutral stances of a county board and one of its townships.

The Ohio Power Siting Board approved construction of the 120-megawatt Frasier Solar project late last month despite local groups’ organizing efforts, which led the other township within the project’s 840-acre footprint and a neighboring township to pass anti-solar resolutions. The power siting board has found that unanimous local government opposition was reason enough to decide other solar projects did not meet a public interest requirement under state law. One of those cases is before the Ohio Supreme Court.

In the Frasier case, however, local governing bodies for Knox County and Clinton Township stayed neutral. Knox County voted unanimously in 2023 to accept a payment arrangement instead of property taxes, which will add more than $40 million for local governments over the project’s 40-year useful life, but it took a neutral position on the project itself.

About six months after an evidentiary hearing — basically an administrative trial — on Frasier Solar, Knox County restricted new solar projects within most of its boundaries. However, legal counsel for the Ohio Ethics Commission found that a conflict of interest prevented Drenda Keesee, a newly elected Knox County commissioner, from taking official action against Frasier Solar because she owned property next to the project site. Another county commissioner served as an ad hoc power siting board member for the Frasier decision, so he could not take a position before hearing the case. He wound up voting with the board’s majority to grant the permit.

Prior to the administrative trial, Clinton Township’s board had clarified that despite an anti-solar position for future projects, it was officially neutral on Frasier Solar.

“We had a very small dog in the fight,” Clinton Township Trustee Jay Maners told Canary Media, noting that most of the project will be in Miller Township. He recalled that there was sparse attendance at early trustee meetings when the project was discussed, with most in favor of it. Then ​“everything exploded” with people suddenly voicing opposition, he said.

“There was a lot of misinformation,” Maners said, such as solar opponents falsely claiming tax dollars would pay for the project, and solar proponents warning about rising energy prices.

The Ohio Power Siting Board’s June 26 ruling discussed Clinton Township’s neutral stance on Frasier Solar, as well as that of Knox County, to stress that local government opposition was not unanimous. The board found that the project was in the public interest and approved the permit.

Supporters are celebrating the win for Frasier Solar but worry about how much the power siting board focused on whether local government opposition was unanimous. That leaves solar energy vulnerable to a standard that depends on potentially arbitrary local government rulings, rather than regulatory experts’ judgment of projects’ merits.

Frasier Solar is exempt from parts of Senate Bill 52, a 2021 law that lets counties block large solar and wind projects before they get to the power siting board. Yet its developer, Open Road Renewables, faced substantial local opposition and misinformation, much of which was stoked by a dark money group with multiple connections to fossil fuel interests and the anti-solar speakers it brought in. Opponents also went to local township meetings to push for anti-solar resolutions.

The staunch local opposition and involvement of fossil fuel interests fit a pattern playing out across the country. The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University last month reported a 32% jump in the number of contested projects for 2024 compared with 2023.

Only within the past few years have state regulators used unanimous local government opposition as a reason to kill proposed solar projects. Those projects, like Frasier, were otherwise exempt from parts of the 2021 law. But Ohio regulations don’t contain such a rule. Another part of Ohio law appears to say that local government consent isn’t a condition for siting decisions.

“I’m certainly happy to see this project move forward, and it had every reason to move forward,” said Dan Sawmiller, Ohio energy policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Yet he questioned what the role of the power siting board is if it lets unanimous local opposition control whether projects go ahead.

“They’ve got the goal post cemented in, and it’s in the wrong location,” Sawmiller said. As he sees it, the board and its staff have a responsibility to use their expertise to make decisions in the public interest for the whole state.