Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Bloomberg:

The greening of red-state America, well underway in the Sun Belt, is now accelerating in the Midwest. Ohio and Indiana — two Republican-led US states long dependent on coal power — are on the verge of solar-farm booms so staggering that their respective buildouts between now and 2027 may vie with Nevada’s and trail only those of California and Texas. 

Developers are expected to install 15 gigawatts’ worth of new photovoltaic panels in the two states, enough to power about 12 million households. That’s happening even as Ohio has moved to slow, if not thwart, renewable energy projects. 

No Republican members of Congress — a group that includes the majority of members from Indiana and Ohio — voted to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s climate law that ushered in hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives for clean energy.

Red states stand to reap the gains regardless: “When you look at renewable energy, the reddest Republican areas are the ones that are benefiting the most,” said Nick Cohen, chief executive of Doral Renewables, which is building what will be one of the largest US solar projects, a $1.6 billion complex in the Hoosier State. 

The low cost of solar power, and the promise of construction and manufacturing jobs, are indeed winning over communities in the Midwest that may not be predisposed to the climate benefits. It helps that Ohio and Indiana feature flat farmland that’s ideal for tracking the arc of the sun. Another impetus is coming from large electricity customers, including tech giants and manufacturers, which are demanding that clean energy help power their data centers and factories. 

While Indiana doesn’t require that any of its power come from renewable sources, the state is finding that it can cultivate the sun as it does soybeans.   “You’re seeing a state like Indiana really punch way above its weight class” in solar farms, Governor Eric Holcomb, a Republican, told Bloomberg Green’s podcast Zero in January. “We’re a small state, relatively speaking, but we have a lot of land, which is required.” 

Ohio and Indiana have some of the lowest grid-connection costs in the electric grid that stretches from Washington, DC to Chicago, according to clean energy research group BloombergNEF. Across both states there are 23 development-stage projects that would each generate more than 300 megawatts of power, BNEF’s data shows. A 300-megawatt farm is about half the capacity of a typical natural gas-fired power plant, but sizable by the standards of US solar. 

Today, utility-scale solar in Ohio costs less than half the price tag of an efficient natural gas-fired plant, including tax credits for renewables, said Amar Vasdev, an analyst at BNEF. In Indiana, solar is more than a third cheaper. 

But barriers persist in Ohio. Despite utility companies such as AES Corp. and American Electric Power Co. pushing to modernize their networks with clean power and major employers exerting pressure, the state in the past decade   has imposed various impediments to renewable energy development. 

“Ohio is doing a good job of attracting large-scale employers and manufacturing, but those investments are going to need in-state renewables, which is becoming harder to permit,” said Cyrus Tashakkori, president of Open Road Renewables, a company developing large projects in the state. 

Ohio’s Republican leadership has tried to prop up coal and nuclear plants that have struggled to compete with solar, wind and natural gas. In 2019, the state passed a controversial law to bail out nuclear plants and scale back a minimum renewable requirement. The bill wound up at the crux of what federal prosecutors say is the largest corruption case in state history. It included utility giant FirstEnergy Corp. admitting that it conspired with public officials and others to pay millions of dollars in bribes toward the law’s passage. The legislator at the center of the case, ex-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, is on trial in federal court in Cincinnati. 

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The pace of Ohio’s solar boom suggests that developers aren’t being scared off. The best way to prevent rejection “is to get into the communities early so they’re supportive,” said Michael Arndt, the president and general manager of Recurrent Energy, a developer owned by panel manufacturer Canadian Solar Inc. “We try to find early champions.” 

Expected tax revenues from solar projects have won over some communities. Miller City, a village of 160 people in Putnam County in northwestern Ohio, hopes a 150-megawatt solar project being developed by Avangrid Inc. will provide sufficient tax revenues to install a $3.6 million sewer collection system the village has sought for two decades. “We are not going to start anything until they start putting in solar panels,” said James Erford, Miller City’s longtime mayor. 

The Miller City project has been in the works for about five years. First, the Covid-19 pandemic and supply snarls slowed development. Now, there’s a possibility of further surveys being required. “It definitely could be delayed,” Erford said. “I don’t think it would be canceled.” He’s hopeful that groundbreaking will happen in July. 

Some farmers in Indiana, meanwhile, are receptive to the prospect of new revenues from solar fields on their land, said Doral’s Cohen: “We’ve been in their barns drinking their homebrews and target-shooting in the back.”