This analysis and news roundup comes from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday.
When solar developers look to build big projects on farmland, the same arguments tend to come up: The array will waste useful agricultural tracts, ruin views, and sully the pastoral character of the rural community, public commenters say.
In Ohio, a state where these debates have long played out, comments like that have even led the state’s power siting board to block projects. These sentiments, in Ohio and beyond, are sometimes motivated by misinformation from anti-solar groups, including organizations with fossil fuel industry ties.
But as one solar developer recently found, hundreds of negative comments don’t necessarily mean hundreds of people oppose a project, Kathiann Kowalski reported this week for Canary Media.
The Ohio Power Siting Board received more than 2,500 comments about the Grange Solar Grazing Center, which aims to bring solar and sheep together on a 2,570-acre plot in the state’s Logan County. When the project’s developer took a closer look at the feedback, it found 16 individuals had collectively submitted more than 140 of those comments, most of them opposing the project. When accounting for repeats, the company found that 80% of individual commenters actually back the solar array.
Supportive commenters said they expect the Grange project to bring jobs and public funding to the county. A 2023 report from the Purdue Center for Regional Development verified that solar projects typically create short-term construction jobs, bring in tax revenue, and help raise farmers’ land values.
Taking a step back, it’s worth noting that more than three-quarters of Americans support expanding solar, per a May 2024 survey from Pew Research Center. That includes 64% of Republicans — though the group has soured on the energy source in recent years.
Two more big things
Mass layoffs hit the Energy Department
The Trump administration closed last week with a big — but not totally unexpected — blow to the U.S. Energy Department workforce. As many as 2,000 probationary DOE employees were laid off, ending what one staffer described to Latitude Media as a “weird, quiet limbo” following President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
But the layoff didn’t last long for a group of employees at the Bonneville Power Administration. About 30 workers who maintain power lines and other infrastructure at the Pacific Northwest grid operator were asked back just days later, a union leader told Politico.
Clean energy smashed a record last year
