On solar energy, a top-down push meets bottom-up doubts

Sugar cane has always grown at the intersection of Highways 3127 and 20 in St. James Parish. Even as subdivisions gradually eat away row after neat row of pasture, the crop has survived on rural Vacherie’s landscape as an unofficial timekeeper, marking the seasons across the unincorporated community’s more than 300-year modern history.

But alongside new stalks in this area, just west of New Orleans, is a mounting conflict over a newer and fast-growing part of America’s rural economy: renewable energy development.

Last year, the New York-based hedge fund D.E. Shaw Group’s renewable energy investments arm introduced a proposal to construct a large-scale solar installation on the sugar cane acreage near the intersection. The St. James Parish planning commission’s rejection of the proposal in May last year was followed in August by a 6-1 vote among Parish Council members for a temporary moratorium on solar projects.

Council members say they aren’t opposed to solar power – or to plans by local electric utility Entergy to expand it in Louisiana.

“I’m OK with that,” council member Jason Amato says.

But in a pattern that has been mirrored in various ways across the country, leaders here say they want to carefully consider issues ranging from the aesthetics to the local economic benefits of specific proposals.

“Renewables got to have a proper place,” Mr. Amato says. “It has to be in the right location.”

The turmoil over local decision-making threatens to slow nationwide efforts backed by the Biden administration to combat climate change by expanding solar and wind energy. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provides a massive boost in federal support for transitioning toward clean energy, and last week the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposed rule change prodding electric utilities to dramatically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

What’s happening here in Vacherie is a reminder that the energy transition’s speed will depend on more than just federal dollars, regulatory mandates, and willing business investors. With the energy transition in recent years has come a rising wave of community pushback that’s playing out from Delaware to California, as municipalities grapple with how clean energy technology and community responsibly coexist.

“Louisiana is part of a national story,” says Lawrence Susskind, a professor of urban and environmental planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This is not NIMBYism.”

Rather, similar projects across the United States “have been stopped for what I call good reasons.”

Council member Amato, a retired Shell employee who has served on the council since 2007, worries that the parish’s 2014 land use plan lacks guidance for these types of projects. He has called for developing an ordinance so that “in the future, we’ve got something to vote yes or no on, and to make a smart decision for everybody.”

Mr. Amato claims local elected officials were caught off guard by the project. The D.E. Shaw investor group did not respond to a request for comment.

A gold rush, with complications

For many, the renewable push equates to a contemporary gold rush, especially across the nation’s energy-rich Sun Belt and Great Plains regions. Solar power made up less than 3% of U.S. electricity production in 2021, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But that’s changing, with solar generating capacity expected to more than triple by 2027, according to the agency’s latest outlook report.

That’s if proposed projects can get approved and built.

Dr. Susskind and fellow MIT researchers set out to understand why some renewable energy infrastructure projects were blocked or failed through community opposition. They explored 53 cases across various regions – 22 of which were solar projects – and found pushback was often tied to lack of community engagement prior to a project’s intention to break ground. Additional factors including debates over the best use of land, intergovernmental disagreement, and concerns over the impact on the environment or Native American communities. Researchers at Michigan State University have reached similar conclusions.

If private investors “had sat down with the people who are going to be upset beforehand, they could have worked it out,” Dr. Susskind says. “But that’s not what investors in renewables do.”

MIT researchers discovered a pattern among private renewable energy investors: Projects usually begin through straw deals – purchases made on behalf of another entity or individual – that then work quickly and in secrecy before landowners can grasp the project’s impact on a property’s value. Quietly, an engineering firm is hired to use satellites, for example, to map out a project according to zoning and size. The proposals are submitted for regulatory approval, and may sail forward if they’re in states committed to increasing renewable energy capacity.   

That is, until some communities push back.

It’s the “decide, announce, defend” model, says Dustin Mulvaney, a professor of environmental studies at San Jose State University and the author of the 2019 book “Solar Power: Innovation, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice.” “There’s very little community input. Someone makes a decision behind closed doors, and they announce to the public that they’re going to build a solar farm. Then they basically spend the whole time defending the project.”

Even when projects are approved to be built, private investors face other hurdles, from equipment shortages to a waiting list for connecting to the power grid. In fact, some power grid managers say they are overwhelmed and are putting a hold on new connections. 

From sugar to oil to solar power

St. James Parish appeared on a map as one of Louisiana’s original 19 parishes authorized by the 1807 Orleans Territorial Legislature, but its founding dates to early 18th-century Colonial settlers near the Mississippi River who grazed cattle. Vacherie loosely translates to “cowshed” in French.

Sugar cane cultivation arrived in 1742, as New Orleans became a trade depot, and sugar became a major export built on slave labor. Today, the state remains a “sugar bowl,” but this region’s economy has shifted increasingly toward energy – dominated in the 20th century by petrochemical facilities. Those too have stirred their share of local controversy.

When the council here voted for the temporary moratorium on large-scale solar projects, Clyde Cooper was the lone no vote on the seven-member body. His vote was intended to make a point among his governing peers.

“We have ordinances in place where we could have approved or disapproved” of the 3,900-acre solar farm project in Vacherie, council member Cooper says. The same ordinances brought the refineries to the parish, he adds.

“Not saying I’m for or against, but a decision could have been made.”

Dr. Susskind worries that the renewable energy industry is mirroring oil and gas’s strong-armed traits – and could suffer as a result. But the renewable energy industry still has time for a course correction.  

That could begin with better ensuring third-party mediators are involved in infrastructure negotiations with communities, if the project is intended as a public-private funding partnership. Meanwhile, publicly owned large-scale renewable utilities could represent a better option for communities that would prefer to stand on their own rather than depend on outside corporations.

But before any of that can happen, communitywide conversation must occur first.

That was the sticking point among most failed renewable energy infrastructure projects, the MIT researchers learned as part of their work earlier this year.

“There was no conversation,” Dr. Susskind says of their group’s findings. Private investors “could have easily changed the design, offered them compensation, offered communities to be a partner and own part of the facility. Then the community would be totally supportive of it.”

But he adds, “That’s not been the pattern of private capital.”