With states, corporations, utilities and the federal government setting aggressive renewable energy goals, as well as big tax incentives such as in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, wind and solar developers have been pushing projects that are igniting fierce battles over property rights, loss of farmland, climate change, aesthetics, the merits of renewable power and a host of other concerns.

Michigan wants to fast-track renewable development. Local townships are suing.

By Izzy Ross / “This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.”

This coverage is made possible through a partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.

A backlash lawsuit is challenging how the state of Michigan plans to approve large renewable energy projects, just weeks before a new law is set to go into effect.

About 80 townships and counties are suing the Public Service Commission, the state’s energy regulating body, over how it plans to grant siting permissions to renewable projects. The suit, filed November 8, could shape how and where solar, wind, and battery storage are developed — and it muddies the process for projects to be approved in the meantime.

Last year, Michigan’s Democrat-controlled Legislature passed a bundle of ambitious climate policies, including changes to the application process for large renewable projects. One of those laws, Public Act 233, allows the state to greenlight utility-scale renewables — like solar arrays of at least 50 megawatts — that in the past could have been slowed or blocked by local governments. The bill passed on promises that it would help meet clean energy goals and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by providing developers with additional paths forward.

Renewable energy advocates had high hopes that it would mark a turning point for Michigan, which has a deep history of local control. In crafting PA 233, lawmakers followed the example of states like Illinois that in recent years have worked to streamline permitting and curtail local governments’ power to restrict renewables.

“I think there was a huge amount of relief on the part of landowners, who have had options agreements and contracts to participate in wind and solar projects, but have been blocked from getting lease payments, essentially, by backlash from local governments,” said Matthew Eisenson, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. Eisenson has argued for regulators to clarify Michigan’s law to ensure projects are protected from local restrictions. According to the Sabin Center, by the end of 2023, at least 22 clean energy projects had been stalled throughout the state by local governments (though some have since moved forward) and at least seven townships had placed severe restrictions on developing industrial solar in areas zoned for agricultural use.

Critics of the law, meanwhile, allege that it wrests control away from the people who live in these areas, and the local governments that know what’s best for their communities.

Legal challenges to Michigan’s new climate laws weren’t exactly unexpected; an effort to repeal the siting law entirely failed earlier this year, because organizers didn’t collect enough signatures to put it to a vote. But this latest appeal in Michigan has gained national attention, with the climate news site Heatmap News writing that it may be “the most important legal challenge for the “renewables” industry in America.”

The lawsuit is challenging the Public Service Commission’s plans to implement the renewable siting law, not the law itself. And as other states consider permitting reform — and whether to keep big “renewable” projects under local or state control — such legal actions could be easier than trying to repeal an entire law, Eisenson said: “There are more options.”

This latest legal challenge was filed after the Public Service Commission announced how the new law for approving project sites would work — a process that involved months of public engagement by the commission in an effort to clarify the rules, including what, exactly, local governments need to have on the books to get the first say on a proposed project.

The lawsuit says the commission’s regulators didn’t follow the proper rulemaking procedures to issue such requirements, and that they undermined the local control that’s baked into PA 233. In particular, the suit challenges the commission’s definition of a “compatible renewable energy ordinance” — a local law that complies with specific state guidelines. PA 233 stipulates that renewable project developers first apply locally as long as the government has a compatible ordinance. If that local ordinance is more restrictive than state law, developers can instead apply directly to the state for approval.

That left some big questions.

Sarah Mills, a professor of urban planning at the University of Michigan who researches how renewable energy impacts rural communities, said while parts of PA 233 are clear — such as the sections on setbacks, fencing, height, and sound — others are murky.

“There’s a whole bunch of things that are traditionally regulated for renewable energy projects that are not mentioned in the law,” she said, like whether local governments can require trees and bushes or ground cover.

The Public Service Commission claims that for a local ordinance to be compatible, it can’t include restrictions on things not included in the law. The plaintiffs behind the appeal disagree.

“That’s not the state of the law, and frankly, it rewrites the legislation, because it doesn’t say that,” said Michael Homier, an attorney with the firm Foster Swift Collins & Smith, who is representing the plaintiffs.

What it comes down to, Homier said, is the scope of the commission’s authority: While he acknowledges regulators can still weigh in on applications, the suit challenges the commission’s broader interpretation of how the law should work.

A commission spokesperson said they couldn’t comment.

Under the commission’s order, only the local government that is zoning a renewable project needs to be considered when granting an approval.  But the lawsuit argues that when more than one jurisdiction is affected — like when a county overlaps with a township — both entities should be included in the decision-making.

Mills points out this would affect how much money would flow to local communities from these projects. The state’s law says communities where large projects are located would receive $2,000 per megawatt, along with any required legal fees, which the developer would pay.

“If the affected local unit of government isn’t only the zoning jurisdiction, then the developer would need to pay $2,000 to the county and to the township. So it would be $4,000 per megawatt,” Mills said, in which case “developers are going to have to pay more money.”

Those represented in the appeal are a minority of local jurisdictions; Michigan has 83 counties and more than 1,200 townships. Many are to the south and around the agricultural region in the east colloquially called “The Thumb,” though a few are farther north.

Watchdog groups that track efforts to oppose renewable energy projects say legal challenges are part of coordinated opposition to such development.

“The lawsuit is an extension of ongoing efforts by anti-renewables interests to thwart clean energy in Michigan, and seeks to open the door to poison-pill local rules that effectively prohibit renewables development,” said researcher Jonathan Kim of the Energy and Policy Institute in an email.

In Michigan, debates over large-scale clean energy projects have been acrimonious, and have had consequences for elected officials. Douglass Township, with a population of a little over 2,200, held a recall election in 2022 — part of a wave of unrest in Montcalm County driven by opposition to renewables. “So our community was totally behind us working on ordinances that would protect them from industrialized wind and solar energy,” said Cindy Shick, who won the race for township supervisor as part of the recall.

The state’s recent siting law drastically diminished the local control they had crafted, according to Shick, and the commission’s order eroded it even further, which is why the township joined the lawsuit.

Reasons for opposing utility-scale renewable projects vary widely, from concerns about a loss of agricultural land to the effects such developments would have on the environment. Other critics point out that companies too often fail to consult tribal nations and ignore Indigenous rights when pursuing projects.

Still, others in support of more development say it’s a boon to communities and people looking to make money by leasing their land. Clyde Taylor, 84, is a farmer who grows hay in Isabella Township in central Michigan. The township is among those suing, though Taylor hasn’t looked into the lawsuit.

He’s allowing a company to build a solar array on around two dozen acres of his land. While he has “mixed feelings” about the state’s new siting law, he generally supports it.

“We have to have laws on the books to make this thing fly,” he said, referring to renewable energy adoption. “And they’ve made it fair enough,” with solar projects under 50 megawatts staying in local control.

Ultimately, the local governments involved in the lawsuit are asking the Court of Appeals to cancel at least part of the commission’s order. The law is set to go into effect on November 29. If the appeal is successful at halting the Public Service Commission from implementing the order, it’s unclear how PA 233 would work as the suit moves through the court, a process that could take more than a year.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/michigan-public-service-commission-permitting-reform-lawsuit/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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Editor’s note: “Energy is, of course, fundamental to both human existence and the functioning of capitalism. It is central to production, as well as the heating and lighting systems that most people take for granted, and the energy sector is by far the single largest producer of greenhouse emissions.” A transition to 100% electrical energy will never happen. The percentage of electrical energy is 20%, of which 3% are “renewable”. Those figures have never been higher in well over 50 years. Also everywhere in the world, the development of “renewables” has and remains propped up by government support.

From a distance, the Ivanpah solar plant looks like a shimmering lake in the Mojave Desert(a death trap for migratory). Up close, it’s a vast alien-like installation of hundreds of thousand of mirrors pointed at three towers, each taller than the Statue of Liberty. When this plant opened near the California-Nevada border in early 2014, it was pitched as the future of solar power. Just over a decade later, it’s closing. Ivanpah now stands as a huge, shiny monument to wasted tax dollars and environmental damage — campaign groups long criticized the plant for its impact on desert wildlife.

“It was a monstrosity combining huge costs, huge subsidies, huge environmental damage, and justifications hugely spurious. It never achieved its advertised electricity production goals even remotely, even as the excuses flowed like wine, as did the taxpayer bailouts.

And now, despite all the subventions, it is shutting down about 15 years early as a monument to green fantasies financed with Other People’s Money, inflicted upon electricity ratepayers in California denied options to escape the madness engendered by climate fundamentalism.”

Instead of forcing coal and oil into obsolescence, we’re merely adding more energy to the system — filling the gap with “renewables” while still burning record amounts of fossil fuels. This is the real danger of the “energy abundance” mindset: it assumes that a limitless supply of “clean” energy will eventually render fossil fuels obsolete. In reality, “renewable” energies are not replacing fossil fuels, but supplementing them, contributing to a continued pattern of broad energy consumption.

Historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz: ‘Forget the energy transition: there never was one and there never will be one’

At first glance, no one is waiting for a historian to play down the idea of an energy transition. Certainly not at a time of environmental headwinds. But above all, Fressoz wants to correct historical falsehoods and reveal uncomfortable truths. ‘Despite all the technological innovation of the 20th century, the use of all raw materials has increased. The world now burns more wood and coal than ever before.’

In his latest book, More and more and more, the historian of science, technology and environment explains why there has never been an energy transition, and instead describes the modern world in all its voracious reality. The term “transition” that has come into circulation has little to do with the rapid, radical upheaval of the fossil economy needed to meet climate targets.

In France, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz has been provoking the energy and climate debate for some time. He denounces the obsession with technological solutions to climate change and advocates a reduction in the use of materials and energy.

The cover of the French edition of your book says ‘the energy transition is not going to happen’. Why do you so strongly oppose this narrative?

We are reducing the carbon intensity of the economy, but that is not a transition. You hear very often that we just need to organise ‘a new industrial revolution’, most recently by US climate envoy John Kerry. You cannot take this kind of historical analogy seriously, this is really stupid.

The idea of an energy transition is actually a very bizarre form of future thinking, as if we would transform from one energy system to another over a 30-year period and stop emitting CO2. If it were to come across as credible, it is because we do not understand the history of energy.

But don’t we have historic precedents? Didn’t we transform from a rural economy that ran on wood to an industrial society with coal as the big driver?

This is an example of the many misconceptions of the history of energy. In the 19th century, Britain used more wood annually just to shore up the shafts of coal mines than the British economy consumed as fuel during the 18th century.

Of course it is true that coal was very important for the new industrial economy in 1900, but you cannot imagine that as if one energy source replaced the other. Without wood, there would be no coal, and therefore no steel and no railways either. So different energy sources, materials and technologies are highly interdependent and everything expands together.

So I guess you won’t agree either with the claim that oil replaced coal in the last century?

Again, oil became very important, but this is not a transition. Because what do you use oil for? To drive a car. Look at Ford’s first car of the 1930s. While it ran on fuel, it was made of steel, requiring 7 tonnes of coal. That’s more than the car would consume in oil over its lifetime! Today it is no different: if you buy a car from China, it still requires about three tonnes of coal.

You should also take into account the infrastructure of highways and bridges, the world’s biggest consumers of steel and cement, and that is just as dependent on coal. Oil drilling rigs and pipelines also use large amounts of steel. So behind the technology of a car is both oil and a lot of coal.

You suggest looking at energy and the climate problem without the idea of ‘transition’. How? 

Focus on material flows. Then you see that despite all the technological innovation of the 20th century, the use of all raw materials has increased (excluding wool and asbestos). So modernisation is not about ‘the new’ replacing ‘the old’, or competition between energy sources, but about continuous growth and interconnection. I call it ‘symbiotic expansion’.

How do you apply this idea of symbiotic expansion of all materials to the current debate about the energy transition?

The energy transition is a slogan but no scientific concept. It derives its legitimacy from a false representation of history. Industrial revolutions are certainly not energy transitions, they are a massive expansion of all kinds of raw materials and energy sources.

Moreover, the word energy transition has its main origins in political debates in the 1970s following the oil crisis. But in these, it was not about the environment or climate, but only about energy autonomy or independence from other countries.

Scientifically, it is a scandal to then apply this concept to the much more complex climate problem. So when we seek solutions to the climate crisis and want to reduce CO2 emissions, it is better not to talk about a transition. It is better to look at the development of raw materials in absolute terms and to understand their intertwinedness. This will also restrain us from overestimating the importance of technology and innovation .

Didn’t technological innovation bring about major changes?

Numerous new technologies did appear and sometimes they rendered the previous ones obsolete, but that is not linked to the evolution of raw materials. Take lighting, for example. Petroleum lamps were in mass use around 1900, before being replaced by electric light bulbs. Yet today we use far more oil for artificial lighting than we did then: to light the headlights of the many millions of cars.

So despite impressive technological advances, the central issue for ecological problems remains: raw materials, which never became obsolete. We speak frivolously about technological solutions to climate problems, and you can see this in the reports of the IPCC’s Working Group 3.

Don’t you trust the IPCC as the highest scientific authority on climate?

Let me be clear, I certainly trust the climate scientists of groups 1 and 2 of the IPCC, but I am highly critical of the third working group that assesses options for the mitigation of the climate crisis. They are obsessed with technology. There are also good elements in their work, but in their latest report they constantly refer to new technologies that do not yet exist or are overvalued, such as hydrogen, CCS and bioenergy (BECCS).

The influence of the fossil industry is also striking. All this is problematic and goes back to the history of this institution. The US has been pushing to ‘play the technology card’ from the beginning in 1992. Essentially, this is a delaying tactic that keeps attention away from issues like decreasing energy use, which is not in the interest of big emitters like the US.

What mitigation scenarios do exist that do not rely excessively on technology? 

As late as 2022, the IPCC’s Working Group 3 report wrote about ‘sufficiency’, the simple concept of reducing emissions by consuming less. I’m astonished that there is so little research on this. Yet it is one of the central questions we should be asking, rather than hoping for some distant technology that will solve everything in the future.

Economists tell what is acceptable to power because it is the only way to be heard and to be influential, it is as simple as that. That is why the debate in the mainstream media is limited to: ‘the energy transition is happening, but it must be speeded up’.

The transition narrative is the ideology of 21st century capitalism. It suits big companies and investors very well. It makes them part of the solution and even a beacon of hope, even though they are in part responsible for the climate crisis. Yet it is remarkable that experts and scientists go along with this greenwashing.

Do you take hope from the lawsuits against fossil giants like Shell and Exxon? 

Of course Exxon has a huge responsibility and they have been clearly dishonest, but I think it is too simplistic to look at them as the only bad guys.  Those companies simultaneously satisfy a demand from a lot of other industries that are dependent on oil, like the meat industry or aviation. More or less the whole economy depends on fossil fuels, but we don’t talk as much about them.

That’s why it is inevitable to become serious about an absolute reduction in material and energy use, and that is only possible with degrowth and a circular economy. That is a logical conclusion of my story, without being an expert on this topic.

Degrowth is not an easy political message. How can it become more accepted?

I do not offer ‘solutions’ in my book since I don’t believe in green utopias. It is clear that many areas of the economy won’t be fully decarbonized before 2050, such as cement, steel, plastics and also agriculture. We have to recognise this and it means that we simply won’t meet the climate targets.

Once you realise this, the main issue becomes: what to do with the CO2 that we are still going to emit? Which emissions are really necessary and what is their social utility?  As soon as economists do a lot more research into this, we can have this debate and make political choices. Yet another skyscraper in New York or a water supply network in a city in the Global South?