Solar development plunged in Ohio after new, restrictive state law

By Jake Zuckerman

cleveland.com (TNS)

COLUMBUS – Ohioans and their elected representatives have killed enough solar development to roughly power the state’s three largest cities in the three years since state lawmakers passed one of the nation’s most stringent restrictions on new solar development.

Those political efforts to block or preempt 2,000 megawatts of new energy coming online are the product of 2021 legislation that gave new power to project neighbors and local elected officials to stop development.

For a sense of scale, the natural gas-fired Guernsey Power Plant, the biggest gas plant in the state, pumps out 1,875 megawatts per year. Using the crude math that 1 megawatt can power 1,000 homes, the solar projects Ohio killed in just the last three years would have generated enough power annually for nearly 2 million households – more than enough to fuel the residents of Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati combined.

It’s not just rejections and withdrawals. Since the new law took effect, the rate of proposed solar development has plummeted. In 2020, the year before the legislation took effect, the Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) received applications to add more than 4,000 megawatts of solar power to the grid. Last year, developers filed for just over 1,000 megawatts, about average for the last three years, according to a Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer analysis of OPSB data.

The solar slump comes as Ohio faces what lawmakers and electrical grid operators have described as an ominous, looming shortfall of energy. The potential shortage is driven by the boom in electricity-intensive data centers, usually owned by technology giants like Amazon or Google, that fuel artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency operations. The retirement of coal-fired power plants has factored in as well. American Electric Power, the utility serving most of the state’s data centers, said it expects that the region’s electricity demand will more than double by 2030.

Republican lawmakers in 2021 enacted Senate Bill 52. The legislation gave local governments veto rights over wind and solar projects in their district – a power they don’t have for gas, coal or nuclear generation plants or transmission lines, which are all sited exclusively at the state level. And it gave the locals voting power on OPSB cases.

The law also gave counties power to prohibit wind and solar in their communities. Since the legislation passed, at least 36 counties – about 40% of the Ohio’s 88 – have done so, according to an OPSB count.

“SB52 has clearly placed a ‘loser’ stamp on solar and wind, for no other reason than a few people decided to be very loud, and now they’re being rewarded for it,” said Shayna Fritz, executive director of the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum, which supports more natural gas and solar development to shore up the grid.

Utility scale solar farms span hundreds of acres, usually in Ohio’s rural communities. The projects bring hundreds of millions in private investment, producing a short-term boom in construction labor, plus a few long-term jobs. They also pay millions to local governments in property taxes or similar agreements with locals, plus private payments to landowners who lease their acreage to the developers.

However, many projects around the state have met fierce resistance from locals, who say the solar farms destroy the rural aesthetic or take away from the state’s available farmland. Or, as one attorney put it to the Ohio Supreme Court on Thursday, they “fundamentally change the character” of an agricultural community.

All the OPSB’s rejections have cited only the political opposition, not any environmental or technical shortfalls.

Before the passage of SB52, the board hadn’t rejected a single solar case. But between October 2022 and January of this year, the board rejected five projects that would have generated 863 megawatts per year. One of those projects, Birch Solar in Auglaize County, faced political opposition from Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, one of the three most powerful men in state politics, along with local opposition from counties and townships. The OPSB rejected the project in 2022, and the developers recently dropped a Supreme Court appeal.

Huffman, through a spokesman, didn’t respond to inquiries.

In five other cases, developers have pulled the plug on their own applications as local opposition to the solar farms has emerged. For instance, EDF Renewables nixed its plans for the 400-megawatt Chipmunk Solar in Pickaway County in late 2022. This year, Open Road Renewables dropped its attempt at building the 500-megawatt Grange Solar near Indian Lake after OPSB staff recommended the board reject the project. And the 68-megawatt Chestnut Solar in Marion County abandoned its proposal after OPSB staff recommended a rejection and locals at public hearings called the project a looming “environmental disaster,” according to a local news report.

Some Republicans broke from the party and voted with Democrats against SB52. They argued it allows government interference with Ohioans’ property rights – if a solar company and a landowner made a deal, who are the neighbors and townships to get in the way?

But in most cases, Ohio’s Republican politicians have trumpeted the projects’ demise, framing them as victories for the people as opposed the loss of economic development opportunities or deeply needed power for the state and region.

Senate President Rob McColley, a Northwest Ohio Republican, declined an interview request. In response to data on the OPSB rejections and withdrawals, he said through a spokesman that Ohio’s power needs “cannot rise and set with sun.”

Developers behind Richwood Solar in Union County wanted to build a 250-megawatt solar farm with a 50-megawatt battery energy storage system built in over its 1,400 acres. By their estimate, it meant 466 construction jobs, 100 installation jobs, and 15 full time jobs. They forecasted $90 million in local tax revenue over its lifetime. While the OPSB found the project meets all the technical and environmental requirements of state law, it recommended the project be rejected, given the opposition from citizens and elected officials. The board did so early this year.

“They don’t want this project,” GOP state Rep. Tracy Richardson said of her constituents in a statement after the OPSB’s decision. “I am pleased to announce this decision of the board. The community joined together in opposition to this project, and I support the will of my constituents.”

Democrats have voiced frustration that Republicans have tipped the scales for the natural gas industry by undermining renewables. Hudson Democratic state Sen. Casey Weinstein recently said solar has become victim to a “political hit job” from Republicans. Euclid Democratic state Sen. Kent Smith sits on the OPSB. The data, he said, seems like Ohio doesn’t like solar projects.

“It looks like because of the local veto capabilities, developers and investors don’t want the headache of a complicated approval process,” he said in a text message.

The OPSB rejected the Kingwood Solar project in Greene County in 2023. On Thursday, lawyers for the developers argued to the Ohio Supreme Court that the OPSB has essentially rewritten state law to make what he described as “I don’t want it!” resolutions passed by township and county governments as the controlling factor.

He warned that energy projects were never meant to be “popularity contests.” If the Supreme Court lets local governments kill solar projects on a whim, he said that logic could extend to other forms of generation like natural gas.

“You will find that it will have a chilling effect and could be, frankly, devastating for Ohio’s energy infrastructure,” said Michael Settineri, an attorney for Kingwood.

Stephen Funk, a state attorney representing the board, said the local officials made a judgement call that should be respected.

“This is a particularly large facility in the heart of prime agricultural land that’s going to fundamentally change the character of Greene County,” he said.

State Rep. Roy Klopfenstein, a Paulding County Republican, is sponsoring leadership-backed legislation aimed at spurring more natural gas fired power plant development in Ohio. He said other factors likely exist behind some of the developers’ withdrawals, including rising grid interconnection fees or anti-renewable sentiment that’s, according to him, incited by federal electric vehicle mandates and similar policies.

But he said he sees no need for a legislative fix.

“I think the system is working, at least as far as when it comes to solar,” he said.

Bill Seitz, a former Republican lawmaker from Cincinnati known for his deep knowledge on energy policy and political animosity toward renewables, played a large hand in shepherding and reshaping SB52 through the House. In an interview Thursday, he was of different minds about the current law.

On the one hand, he said until battery storage technology advances, we can’t depend entirely on a grid that needs sunshine and wind to stay afloat. And the solar developers should do a better job winning community support, or they should shift their business models toward solar projects on home or commercial rooftops and brownfield areas.

On the other hand, he said natural gas plants take four to seven years to build and developers’ interest has been sluggish. Ohio is facing an energy shortfall. Maybe, he said, Ohio shouldn’t be so picky and choosy about its electrons.

“There is a case to be carefully made that in the short term, we’re gonna need all the energy we can get,” he said. “The solar developers ought to do a better job convincing the locals that the arrays are not the impingements on their viewsheds and property rights as they think they are. Certainly not as much as wind turbines would.”

While its support falls on political lines locally, some red states led the nation last year in renewable generation. The top five include Texas, California, Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas, according to a review of federal data from Inside Climate News. Ohio ranked 26th.

Political resistance – especially from Republicans and at the local level – is a national trend. But researchers at Vanderbilt University recently singled out Ohio as a “leading example” of the NIMBYism pattern after reviewing 55 OPSB case files, plus media reports and other public statements.

After SB52 passed, county after county issued resolutions claiming projects would ruin the rural character of the land, wouldn’t help or would actively provide economic harm, would threaten the local environment, and others. The study noted one Republican County Commissioner, Drenda Keesee of Knox County, saying in a campaign video that “our way of life is under attack” by developers trying to build a “solar wasteland” of “toxic industrial energy” plants.

“In summary, the law has been an effective instrument not only to undermine new utility-scale, renewable energy development but also to increase local opposition,” the researchers wrote.