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The small southeastern Minnesota city of La Crescent receives just a handful of permit applications each year to install solar panels on homes.
Despite the small volume, it’s still important to city sustainability coordinator Jason Ludwigson that it’s a smooth process for homeowners and installers.
That’s why the city of 5,000 recently became one of the first in the state to start using a software program designed to streamline local solar permitting.
Solar Automated Permitting Plus, or SolarAPP+, was developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in collaboration with the solar industry, code organizations, local governments, and the building safety community. Since its release in 2018, SolarAPP+ has been used by more than 160 cities and counties to automate much of the permitting process for smaller solar installations.
In La Crescent, an application that might have taken a few days for a city employee to review can now be approved online in minutes for projects that meet criteria. That “will save (time) for both the contractor and the city,” Ludwigson said. “It makes it faster for our building and zoning department.”
Minnesota lawmakers want to encourage more communities to join La Crescent in adopting the software. This year, the Legislature budgeted $2 million for the Commerce Department to deliver programs and training to local agencies, contractors, inspectors and others involved in solar permitting.
The state’s solar industry association supports use of the software, in part for its potential to standardize a process that can right now vary significantly from city to city. Making it easier to permit installations could save companies time, potentially lowering costs and helping to expand rooftop solar in the state, which will need many megawatts more clean energy to reach its climate goals.
Getting permits for solar projects in Minnesota can take days or weeks and cost as much as $1,000. Typically, solar installers in the state apply electronically or in person for separate building, local electrical and utility interconnection permits. After receiving approvals for all three applications — and any other that are required — they start building projects that, once completed, are reviewed onsite by building and electrical inspectors.
Installers using the software receive automated approvals if they accurately complete forms for their building and electrical permits and, if required, fire and structural permits. Any errors are flagged and sent back to the installer for corrections. The app integrates with existing permitting software programs used by government agencies, according to NREL.
California cities have been the biggest adopters so far, but the app is beginning to catch on in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. By the end of 2023, the NREL reported that the free software had been used nationally on 32,800 projects, saving 33,000 hours of permitting staff time. Installers pay a $25 administrative fee and the community’s permitting fee.
State Rep. Patty Acomb, who chairs the Climate and Energy Finance and Policy committee, said she and other lawmakers want to provide state grants so cities can learn how to use the software and eventually create a consistent permitting process across the state. “The intention is to make (permitting) easy and predictable,” she said.
Lissa Pawlisch, director of the Energy Development Section at the state Department of Commerce, said the department is developing a program to reach out to communities interested in SolarAPP+ and assist them in incorporating it into existing permitting software. She also believes the app could play a role in helping move installations through the new federally funded Solar for All program that will serve low income households.
Great Plains Institute’s Brian Ross said that Solar for All requires a consistent approach to permitting, and that one way to achieve that is with the SolarApp+ software. The app would give a “jurisdictional consistency” to applications from low income solar customers and “to make sure there are not barriers in the way.”
Despite its promise the app will not work in every situation. It only incorporates local versions of electrical permits and not the state permit, which many communities use. “If the local government relies on the state permitting process (for instance, Minneapolis), then I don’t think there is any advantage to using SolarAPP because the state electric permitting process is already effectively an ‘automatic issue,'” he said.
Donna Pickard of TruNorth Solar has spent decades filing solar permits with dozens of municipalities. She said installers need building, electrical and interconnection permits and approvals before projects begin, often taking over a month.
Pickard wonders if SolarAPP+ will interest Minnesota communities because many already have established permitting systems to manage solar projects. However, having dealt with many different permitting structures, Pickard said she “likes the idea of standardization because it would make things easier.”
Another challenge is that the software can’t evaluate permits for projects on flat or metal roofs in the Midwest. Jeff Cook, solar analysis subprogram manager at the NREL Strategic Energy Analysis Center in Colorado, said the software covers about 80% of eligible solar installations but the number declines in the Midwest due to “high snow load and metal roof penetration.”
Pawlisch said outreach and grants for SolarApp+ would likely start next year. The start date is also unclear for Solar for All as she continues to meet with federal and state officials to work out the details.
BUILDINGS: In New Hampshire, a bill on the governor’s desk would update much of the state’s building code except for its energy efficiency provisions, leaving those at an earlier standard because of claims that home costs would rise. (NHPR)
ALSO:
WIND: As developers wait to learn the results of a multi-state offshore wind project solicitation, one developer strikes up memoranda of understanding with two Connecticut businesses for their services during construction. (The Day)
GRID:
FOSSIL FUELS:
NUCLEAR: Constellation Energy acknowledges amid speculation that it’s possible to restart unit 1 at Three Mile Island but that no decisions have been made. (WTAE)
SOLAR:
POLICY:
WORKFORCE: A $2 million federal grant will help a Maryland community development agency help expand the state’s energy efficiency workforce to make more upgrades at low-income households. (news release)
Correction: Starke County, Indiana, officials last week denied a claim by residents that documentation for a proposed solar project is missing. An earlier version of this digest incorrectly identified the county.
SOLAR: Two developers pursuing solar projects in Ohio are proactively meeting with communities early in the development process in an effort to boost their chances with state regulators. (Energy News Network)
ALSO:
EMISSIONS:
COAL: Northern Wisconsin coal plants are being replaced by natural gas and renewable energy as utilities prepare to comply with federal regulations. (WXPR)
GRID:
CLIMATE:
WIND:
HYDROELECTRIC: Hundreds of dams across the Upper Midwest are at growing risk of failure as they age and face more pressure from extreme weather. (Inside Climate News)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Professional racing league NASCAR, while still heavily reliant on internal combustion vehicles, releases a prototype all-electric race car at an event in Chicago. (Chicago Tribune)
COMMENTARY: A Wisconsin clean energy advocate says the state’s solar energy boom will provide an economic jolt to rural communities. (Door County Pulse)
CLEAN ENERGY: The Inflation Reduction Act has spurred billions of dollars in clean energy investment as it nears its second birthday, and forthcoming tax credit guidance is set to further accelerate its impact. (Utility Dive)
BUILDINGS:
OVERSIGHT: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission started 2024 with only three of five commissioners but managed to enact major transmission, cost allocation and other rules in the first half of the year. (Utility Dive)
WORKFORCE: A $60 million federal program will fund nine training efforts across 10 states to prepare workers for climate resilience-boosting jobs. (Inside Climate News)
CLIMATE:
STORAGE: Residential and utility-scale energy storage development is off to a strong start this year, on pace to break development records. (Canary Media)
SOLAR:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
SOLAR: The Gila River Indian Community nears completion of a 1.3 MW solar installation over an irrigation canal in central Arizona. (Canary Media)
ALSO:
CARBON CAPTURE: A company proposes sequestering captured carbon under 605,000 acres of mostly federal land in southwestern Wyoming. (Cowboy State Daily)
CLIMATE:
UTILITIES: Hawaiian Electric plans to retire 88 MW of fossil fuel generation by 2030, citing aging facilities and tightening environmental regulations. (Maui Now)
GRID:
HYDROPOWER: California’s grid operator declares its first transmission emergency of the summer after a wildfire forces a key hydropower facility offline. (RTO Insider, subscription)
OIL & GAS:
COMMENTARY: A New Mexico advocate says state energy transition funding for a solar-powered irrigation pump for Indigenous farmers is “paving the way for a brighter future.” (Santa Fe New Mexican)
CLEAN ENERGY: Wisconsin has experienced a “monumental jump” in clean energy development under Gov. Tony Evers as Democrats have focused on its economic benefits rather than climate change. (Inside Climate News)
EMISSIONS: Federal regulators announce a record settlement with Marathon Oil, which will pay $241.5 million in penalties for various Clean Air Act violations in North Dakota. (Inforum)
NUCLEAR: Federal regulators begin the environmental review process as part of a company’s request to reopen a shuttered nuclear plant in southwestern Michigan. (Detroit News)
PIPELINES:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
SOLAR:
TRANSPORTATION: An Illinois county transit agency receives a $17.8 million federal grant to replace diesel buses with hybrid and compressed natural gas models. (Journal-Register)
CLIMATE: The Iowa Board of Regents approves a new climate change major at Iowa State University after a discussion about how the syllabus would not stifle students’ “free speech.” (Globe Gazette)
COMMENTARY:
The “solar-coaster” is about to get a little smoother for Minnesota solar installers.
State lawmakers this spring extended funding for a rooftop solar rebate program through 2035, bucking a trend of two-year renewals that caused uncertainty for installers every couple of years.
Solar industry leaders say the additional financial certainty will help companies invest in longer-term marketing and outreach, particularly for reaching lower-income customers.
Since 2014, Solar Rewards has helped more than 8,000 residential and small business customers pay for solar installations in Xcel Energy’s territory. The program is managed by the utility, but the legislature controls its budget, which has ranged between $5 million and $15 million annually. The money comes from yearly fees the state collects from Xcel in return for allowing it to store nuclear waste at two power plants.
Logan O’Grady, executive director of the Minnesota Solar Energy Industries Association, said the extension represents a compromise — and a victory — after failed attempts to convince lawmakers to increase the program’s funding. Funding has rarely stayed the same two years in a row. Installers have struggled with planning because they did not know if the rebates would be renewed.
“It creates the inability to plan for what you’ll be getting year to year,” O’Grady said. “You get through a two-year cycle, and then there might be nothing.”
Uncertainty about the rebate’s future has been challenging to communicate to customers. O’Grady said installers could not make promises in some years because they did not know if the program would continue. Now, even if funding runs out for the year, companies will be able to confidently tell customers that it will be available next year.
He said the extension also will help installers work with low- and moderate-income Solar Rewards customers. In 2023, the Legislature significantly modified Solar Rewards by allocating half the money for low-income participants while increasing subsidies for those projects.
Bobby King, Minnesota director of Solar United Neighbors, said connecting to organizations working with low-income households has taken a few years. The extension gives him the confidence to continue the work.
“You need the program to be consistent if you’re going to continue to grow a program to help folks get low-income solar,” he said. “We can be confident about bringing more resources to staff a (low-income) program.”
All Energy Solar CEO Michael Allen said the Solar Rewards extension “provides you a little bit more confidence” but “still doesn’t take away the real costs of having to market and to sell, design and build projects for this market segment.” He estimated that it can cost as much as 10 times more to recruit and sell to income-qualified customers because of the relationship building, education, financing and sometimes structural issues that need to be addressed.
The Solar Rewards budget over the 10-year extension will be a bit more than half of what the program received from 2014 to 2025. He worries the subsidies will slow rooftop solar, which needs to expand to meet the state’s climate goal of net zero emissions by 2050.
Martin Morud, CEO and owner of TruNorth Solar, said he prefers stable funding that allows his business time to develop relationships with community organizations that work with income-qualified customers. He said TruNorth Solar has worked on income-qualified projects involving food shelves and transitional and low-income housing through Solar Rewards and other programs.
Cooperative Energy Futures had begun using Solar Rewards for residential projects over the past two years after primarily building community solar projects with many low- and moderate-income subscribers.
Pouya Najmaie, its policy and regulatory director, said the nonprofit recently hired an employee to focus on income-qualified projects. The Solar Rewards extension will help the nonprofit maintain that position and potentially add another if demand grows.
The Solar Rewards bill was part of a 1,430-page omnibus bill that Gov. Tim Walz signed into law in late May. Rep. Patty Acomb, House of Representatives Climate and Energy Finance and Policy Committee Chair, said lawmakers supporting Solar Rewards worried that the program could have ended in 2025 if the Democratic-dominated Legislature changed hands.
“Fifty million dollars, or $5 million a year, is better than zero,” she said. “I think that having programs like this is a signal to the industry that there is support from the state.”
Duke Energy has been laying the groundwork for a new gas power plant in North Carolina’s Person County for years, touting it as the “next generation” of electricity production and lining up support from local politicians eager to hold on to the utility’s tax dollars.
With acknowledgement from regulators and even some clean energy experts that new gas infrastructure may be needed as Duke shutters its coal fleet, the long-planned gas turbines once seemed like an inevitability.
But now, the 1,360 megawatt combined-cycle facility poised to replace the company’s aging coal smokestacks on Hyco Lake has become a major point of contention. And while the odds still favor Duke, community members and advocates alike say they have cause for hope.
First, there’s the reality of new Biden administration rules on fossil fuel power plants. Beginning in 2032, any new large, combined-cycle plant like that proposed in Person County must either cut its carbon emissions drastically or run 40% of the time or less.
Because North Carolina’s geology isn’t suited to carbon sequestration and emissions-free hydrogen fuel isn’t yet viable, the company would have to limit the plant’s operations — either making it unavailable at key times or requiring costly startups and shutdowns, said Ridge Graham, the North Carolina program manager for Appalachian Voices.
“Either of these options make this combined cycle plant a bad investment and a much more expensive form of electricity generation than clean or renewable energy sources,” Graham told commissioners at a public hearing in Roxboro last month. “This is especially true for Duke customers as the purchase of gas fuel is passed on and has led to multiple rate increases through riders on electricity bills since 2017.”
Bolstering that concern, Public Staff, the state’s ratepayer advocate, notes that Duke lists a proposed new pipeline to transport gas to the plant as an operating cost that would “presumably” be recovered through the fuel rider.
Even if the actual fuel costs were cut in half, engineers for the agency said, “total transportation charges would mostly be unchanged within the ‘Fuel’ category because of the significant pipeline costs that would be necessary to provide natural gas service to the Roxboro site.”
In addition to these charges, ratepayers would also have to pay the full cost of the plant, amortized over 35 years, plus Duke’s regulator-approved profit margin, energy analyst Elizabeth Stanton said in written testimony on behalf of Sierra Club, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
What’s more, she noted, ratepayers would cover whatever “replacement resources” were needed to meet demand “after the facility’s expected generation was decreased.”
In contrast, Stanton says, Duke’s estimated costs for ratepayers assume the plant will run at over 40% capacity through 2042 — a scenario squarely at odds with the new Biden administration regulation.
“Duke needs to account for the rule in their planning, and they have not done that,” Mikaela Curry, a North Carolina-based campaign manager at the Sierra Club, said in an interview. “Who pays for a gas plant that can only run 40% of the time?”
While Public Staff supports the new plant, it also asserts in testimony that Duke hasn’t developed a plan for how it will comply with the new federal rule.
“We have concerns about the impact and implementation of the recently issued [Clean Air Act] Rule,” engineers Dustin Metz and Evan Lawrence wrote. “We cannot yet identify how [the] proposed Roxboro facility may be impacted and to what extent.”
The agency also hasn’t seen a comprehensive analysis from Duke to justify the location for the combined cycle unit. “The Public Staff cannot say definitively that the proposed Roxboro… project is least cost for [Duke’s] ratepayers,” Metz and Lawrence said in their testimony.
Other critics also question whether the gas plant is Duke’s most economical option, though for different reasons.
In testimony for the environmental groups, Stanton asserts that Duke artificially limits renewables in its carbon-reduction models; assumes clean energy is 60% costlier than industry standards; and, in the plan that most quickly transitions the company away from fossil fuels, makes all resources 20% more expensive. Plus, new generation built before 2030 — which would be mostly solar — gets an 8% penalty.
“Duke’s rationale for requesting the [Hyco Lake plant… is the] selection of gas resources in its least-cost modeling,” Stanton wrote. “That modeling, however, was flawed, including multiple biases for gas resources and against renewable resources.”
Detractors also doubt the company’s plan to convert the gas plant to run on emissions-free hydrogen as late as 2049 – just in time to comply with state law. That “presumption,” said consultant Bill McAleb in testimony on behalf of the Environmental Defense Fund, “is not based on substantive evidence presented in this docket proceeding.”
Detailing an array of challenges, including uncertainty from equipment manufacturers, McAleb concludes a zero-carbon, hydrogen-fueled facility, “is not only speculative but unlikely.”
While advocates wage a legal campaign against the gas plant, activists are reaching out to the people of Person County face-to-face, knocking doors on the roads surrounding the existing coal facility.
Juhi Modi, North Carolina field coordinator for Appalachian Voices, says the canvassing effort so far has identified more opponents than not – surprisingly so.
“Given that it’s a very nuanced topic, and the fact that people appreciate Duke’s economic presence in the county,” Modi said, “it’s been really meaningful to just hear what they think.”
Referencing the yearslong campaign to get Duke to excavate its leaking coal ash pits, Modi added:
“These people were also impacted by coal ash contaminating their well water and were part of a long fight to get their water cleaned up, and still have a lot of skepticism about Duke’s ability to responsibly operate in this community.”
Along an existing pipeline right-of-way, the new pipeline Dominion Energy plans to transport gas to Duke and other customers has also given some in the community pause. Activists say it appears to pass dangerously close to Woodland Elementary School in Semora.
“What would happen if there is an accident? If there is a fire or an explosion?” Modi said. “It’s a real concern for the children, the teachers and the staff that work in the school.”
While cleaner than coal in terms of smog-and soot-forming air pollution, the gas plant’s emissions of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — will negate its climate benefits, said Katie Moore, an air quality researcher who lives in Roxboro.
“Not only do we not have enough time to use [gas] as a ‘bridge fuel,’” she said, but it doesn’t even make sense because the climate impacts are the same, essentially, as coal.”
Moore also believes there’s an incorrect assumption that either Duke replaces its Hyco Lake coal units with gas or the company leaves the county altogether.
“Those are not the only two options,” said Moore, who grew up in neighboring Durham County and moved to slower-paced Person 2.5 years ago. “I don’t want people to be out of jobs and I don’t want to lose 20% of the tax base. But that’s not an inevitability. I think there are lots of ways that we could embrace renewables in this county.”
Still, at an in-person public hearing last month, Moore and other locals against the plant were outnumbered by supporters, who ranged from tourism boosters to local elected officials to the superintendent of Person County Schools, Rodney Peterson.
“A school district like ours could not recover from the loss of our local tax base,” said Peterson, who noted he was appearing in a personal capacity. “I ask you to remember our students, our parents, our teachers in Person County.”
Besides support from many community leaders, many other factors still weigh in Duke’s favor.
Notwithstanding its concerns about the plant’s cost and its compliance with the new Biden administration rules, Public Staff believes the energy it will provide will be vital as the company works to reduce its carbon pollution as required by law.
“There is a need for [combined cycle and combustion turbine] natural gas generation in [Duke’s] service territories,” the engineers wrote in their testimony. Denying the company a permit to build the plant, they asserted, “could delay interim carbon emissions reduction compliance and coal plant retirements set forth in the Carbon Plan Order.”
While solar combined with battery storage could in theory provide similar economic and energy benefits as the gas plant, Person County leaders would have to repeal a 2022 ordinance that effectively bans large-scale solar farms.
Meanwhile, Duke is eschewing an Inflation Reduction Act loan program meant to encourage clean energy investments in communities with retired coal plants.
And even though the commission is dominated by appointments from Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who’s embraced the clean energy economy and criticized fossil fuels, the panel has so far exhibited little resistance to the utility’s gas expansion plans.
“It just makes me feel sad,” said Crystal Cavalier-Keck, the co-founder of the Indigenous activist group Seven Directions of Service, referencing how the panel approved Duke’s last carbon reduction plan with few edits. “It’s disheartening.”
A spokesperson for Duke declined to comment for this story, but the company’s formal responses to Public Staff and clean energy advocates intervening in the case are due later this month. An expert witness hearing is expected as soon as early August.
In the meantime, organizers like Cavalier-Keck say they’ll keep getting the word out. “We’re just going to continue to knock on all the doors,” she said, “and continue to educate people.”
Detroit’s City Council again postponed a vote on a fund connected with the proposed solar plan this week. The plan involves building 200 acres of solar fields in six neighborhoods to offset the energy used by municipal buildings.
Councilmembers continue to voice disagreements over the first phase of the plan, which would create 104 acres of solar in the Gratiot-Findlay, State Fair and Van Dyke-Lynch neighborhoods.
Councilmember Angela Whitfield-Calloway has argued that utility-scale solar is wrong for the city and questioned why Detroit hasn’t explored placing solar on municipal buildings or developing arrays outside the city.
However, Councilmembers Fred Durhal III and Coleman A. Young II have said the plan could revitalize neighborhoods and save residents money. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has pitched the program as a way to meet city climate goals while reducing blight and illegal dumping in vacant lots.
Homeowners in the footprint of the proposed solar fields would receive twice the fair market value of their homes or $90,000, whichever is higher, while renters will get 18 months of rent to relocate. Homeowners within community benefits areas surrounding the projects will receive $15,000 to $25,000 each for energy efficiency upgrades.
In the five neighborhoods being considered for the second phase of the solar plan, 28 of the 31 homeowners have already signed letters of intent to sell their homes, according to Duggan.
He has proposed using a $4.4 million equity fund derived from the Utility Conversion Fund, which is legally required to be used for energy conservation, to purchase these homes.
City council has twice delayed a vote on the fund so far, with Whitfield Calloway emerging as a strong critic. She said during the July 2 council meeting that the arrays would do little to address blight and crime.
“Solar panels will disrupt and destroy entire neighborhoods. There will be no future affordable housing being built anywhere around a solar farm,” Whitfield Calloway said.
Young responded to Whitfield Calloway, saying the plan would help lower taxes for Detroiters who would otherwise be paying the utility bills for city buildings.
“I, for one, believe the taxes are too damn high,” he said.
One resident who lives near the proposed 40-acre State Fair solar project in Whitfield Calloway’s district spoke out against the plan on Tuesday, calling attention to the infill housing developed by the nonprofit Emmanuel Community House in the area.
“That area could be used again for single-family housing and bringing people back to the city of Detroit,” she said. “I’ve been there since 1980 and want to bring it back.”
Meanwhile, the city council is considering asking for an outside legal opinion on the solar plan. Council President Mary Sheffield has said she has questions about the city’s use of eminent domain and whether it can exempt itself from its own zoning ordinance.
Detroit Corporation Council Conrad Mallet and the council’s Legislative Policy Division have said that the solar sites are exempt because they’re being put to public use.
As city council weighed the equity fund, its Public Health and Safety Standing Committee has been considering a resolution to approve the acquisition of land for the solar plan and the contracts for Lightstar Renewables and DTE Energy, the businesses chosen to develop the solar fields.
Developer representatives and city departments made lengthy presentations touting the potential for solar to improve health outcomes by reducing emissions from fossil fuel power plants and increasing energy reliability as the grid is upgraded to enable solar.
During Monday’s meeting, Whitfield Calloway questioned why Detroit hasn’t explored placing arrays on city buildings or developing solar fields outside the city limits as places like Chicago, Cincinnati and Philadelphia have done.
“Why not put the solar panels on the structures that we’re trying to drive power to?” she asked. “Why do we have to put them in neighborhoods?”
“We really feel that it was the right thing to do to invest in our land here and make sure that residents are able to benefit from it,” Trisha Stein, Detroit’s chief strategy officer, said earlier in the meeting. She said neighborhood groups had drawn up the areas that would host the solar fields and surrounding community benefits areas.
DTE Energy also came in for criticism on Monday, with councilmember James Tate saying he was met with “eyerolls” and “sighs” when he told the Detroit Green Task Force that DTE Energy would be developing some of these projects.
“You have a terrible reputation,” he said, calling out the utility’s opposition to community solar, which allows residents to subscribe to offsite solar arrays and receive bill credits for the energy produced.
The committee will continue deliberating on these contracts next week.
This story was co-published by Energy News Network, the Maine Monitor, and Grist.
Ron Huber rifled through a thick folder full of decades of state environmental records outside a community hall in the tiny coastal Maine town of Searsport. For the longtime local conservation activist, the scene inside was a familiar one: dozens of neighbors, workers and environmentalists mingled over pizza and coffee, discussing the merits of a proposed industrial project that has potential to transform the local economy, but at the expense of a locally beloved natural area.
“We’ve seen these things rise and fall many times,” Huber said outside the event late this past spring. Conservationists have celebrated over the decades as plans for a coal plant and a liquefied natural gas terminal on Sears Island came and went without success.
This latest proposal presents a new kind of conflict. Rather than pitting townspeople against a corporate polluter, this development would support clean energy and be integral to the state’s plan for cutting climate emissions.
In May, the state applied for a $456 million federal grant to build a specially designed port on about 100 acres of Sears Island to support Maine’s nascent floating offshore wind industry. About two-thirds of the 941 acre island is in permanent conservation, and the state retains an easement on the rest, which has been reserved for a potential port for years.
“We’re not optimistic that this one’s going to die under its own weight,” Huber said, noting that the offshore wind port has far more popular support than previous development proposals.
Visits to recent community events like this one show that, unlike the polarized fights over clean energy projects in other parts of the country, Maine’s wind port is creating more personal divides — challenging residents’ values around climate change, conservation and economic factors. It previews what could be coming as wind grows in the Northeast.
“My question is really about why we’re not actually all on the same team,” said Belfast, Maine, resident Julianne Dow inside the community hall, during a question-and-answer period with New England labor organizers. “I’m very pro-union, I’m pro-offshore wind and pro having it here, and for the economic benefits for the region. But I’m also very pro maintaining Sears Island as a precious Midcoast resource.”
Dow and activists like Huber want the port built instead at a Sprague Energy-owned oil and logistics terminal across the water known as Mack Point. It was considered as an alternative in lengthy public processes in recent years, and Sprague and opponents of the Sears Island proposal have continued to urge reconsideration for it so far this summer.
Offshore wind has taken some big steps forward in Maine this year. Federal regulators approved a state research array of floating turbines, which generate power in deep waters far offshore, and are nearing leasing for commercial projects. A new state law calls for Maine to procure three gigawatts of offshore wind by 2040, using union-standard labor to build the projects and a floating wind-focused port.
Formal environmental assessments and site analyses are still pending. But state port authority director Matthew Burns wrote in June that Mack Point’s “physical and logistical constraints, need for significant dredging, and increased costs to taxpayers for land leasing and port construction would result in an expensive and inferior port for Maine compared to a versatile, purpose-built port on Sears Island.”
Still, opponents worry that wetlands and forests on Sears Island could be disrupted by port construction, even if most of the surrounding ecosystem remains intact.
“Because we have to sacrifice something, let’s sacrifice something irreplaceable, instead of cleaning up a dirty old existing port?” Huber said outside the event. “That’s just ridiculous.”
Asked if he saw wind as a climate solution more broadly, Huber began to express doubts about how turbine arrays would affect the ocean ecosystem. Fellow opponent Lou MacGregor of Belfast cut in.
“Right now, what we’re focusing on is protecting Sears Island,” MacGregor said. “We can get to whether we support offshore wind or not after we protect Sears Island.”
Scott Cuddy, who until recently was policy director of the Maine Labor Climate Council, emphasized at the recent event that his group is agnostic about the port’s location, focusing instead on the benefits it could bring. Under Maine’s wind procurement law, he said, the port’s labor standards will be the same wherever it ends up.
“We desperately want to see this happen, because we need to fight climate change, and we need to do it with good jobs,” Cuddy said.
Cuddy and other labor organizers said state studies indicate that the port project and new wind farms could bring thousands of jobs to coastal Maine towns like Searsport. Local leaders said it could be a boost for shrinking school populations, attracting families to stay in the town long-term.
“I think there’s been a mindset for a long time among kids, especially in rural Maine, like this was the thing I always heard — ‘You got to leave the state if you want to get a good job,'” said Sam Boss, the director of apprenticeships, workforce and equity for the Maine AFL-CIO. “We’ve got to find ways to keep our people here. And if there’s good opportunities, people will stay for them.”
Boss, Cuddy and others answered locals’ questions about plans for training programs for young people to enter the trades, and the family-sustaining wages and benefits promised by the growing wind industry — both in short-term construction positions and into the future.
“These are the skills that pay the bills, and they’re skills that don’t go away. The work might change — you know, we went from nuclear power plants, to now we’re doing offshore wind power development. But the skills are transferable,” said Nicki Kent, a union electrician who came to talk about her experience working on offshore wind in Rhode Island. “We’ve just got to get screwdrivers and wrenches into kids’ hands.”
Belfast resident Daniel Cowan was taking diligent notes on the back of an envelope while his teenage sons listened from the audience. A Navy veteran now pursuing a degree through the GI Bill, Cowan said he was curious about the possibility of wind industry jobs that could help him and his kids stay in Maine.
Cowan empathized with attendees who were opposed to building the port on Sears Island, but said he thought the project’s benefits sounded like they would outweigh the costs.
“You’re going to destroy something no matter what you do. I love Sears Island, I think it’s great, I love walking my dogs out there. But I don’t think that’s going to change,” he said. “The world is coming to an end one way or another, and how fast we get there makes a difference.”
The island itself is connected to the mainland by a long causeway, bisected at its start by rail lines that snake around the coastline toward nearby Mack Point. The causeway juts out into Penobscot Bay, and Sears Island opens up at its end, an oval of land covered in trees and flanked by sandy, seaweedy shores.
On a Saturday morning not long before the Searsport labor dinner, a large group of birders gathered at the gate where the causeway’s pavement continues into the forest. They had come to scout for the tiny, colorful songbirds that rest on the island each year amid long migrations between Canada and the tropics.
Near the edge of the woods, someone had spray-painted the asphalt road with “Wassumkeag,” the indigenous Wabanaki name for the island. Hand-lettered signs with the web address for the advocacy group Alliance for Sears Island read, “Wind power = Good? On Sears Island = Bad!”
The state does not plan to site wind turbines on Sears Island itself. Workers at the proposed port would help build and assemble towers and blades in pieces, towing them far out to sea for final assembly.
Still, anti-wind groups have seized on the proposed project. Lobstermen affiliated with the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA), a Maine-based advocacy group founded in 2023 that focuses partly on opposing offshore wind, spoke out against the port at the recent jobs event.
“My concern is only that in trying to affect climate change, that we’re going to cause more damage to the environment than climate change is already causing,” said NEFSA officer Dustin Delano, a commercial fisherman from Friendship, Maine.
NEFSA has since posted signs where the island causeway intersects with the heavily trafficked Route 1 that read “Keep Sears Island wild.” Similar signs showing a crossed-out wind turbine bore the name of Rhode Island-based Green Oceans. Since its founding in 2022, it has focused mostly on opposing Revolution Wind, currently under construction in waters between Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Many who joined the recent birding trip seemed unaware that Maine’s plans for Sears Island did not involve actually erecting turbines there or close to shore. Others expressed doubts about wind generally. Some did not want to discuss the issue at all, focusing instead on peering through binoculars at the Northern parula, black-throated green warbler or hermit thrush chirping in the trees along the road.
A few people mentioned concerns that wind projects could harm whales. Scientists have found no evidence to support this claim, which has been linked to fossil fuel-funded disinformation campaigns. Green Oceans’ campaigns in Rhode Island have mimicked the delay and disinformation strategies of climate denialist groups like the Texas Public Policy Foundation, according to Brown University research.
The threat of climate change to ecosystems like Sears Island’s, meanwhile, is very real. The Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest-warming water bodies in the world, swelling sea levels, threatening the lobster fishery and leading to more frequent, destructive storms. Maine saw a state-record four federal disaster declarations in 2023 and has received two more already this year.
The warming trend may affect the migratory birds that draw crowds to Sears Island each year. Warming temperatures are reshaping the length and timing of Maine’s seasons, which, combined with declines in insect populations driven by agriculture and other factors, could threaten the birds’ success, studies show.
“If you look at decades and decades of patterns, you’ll see that birds are arriving one to two weeks earlier,” said William Broussard, a Midcoast Audubon board member who led the recent Sears Island trip. “If they get here early, they might not have the insects that they depend on to be out, because maybe the trees aren’t leafing out… and that can be really tough.”
Midcoast Audubon hasn’t taken a position on the wind port issue. It’s a chapter of Maine Audubon, which separately supports the project but is not advocating for one site over the other. Maine Audubon is likewise independent from the National Audubon Society, which advocates for “responsibly sited renewable energy,” including wind, as a climate solution.
Marge Stickler, a birder from Belfast, said she wished the port would be built at Mack Point instead. “I have mixed feelings about what they’re doing here,” she said. “I love coming here… it’s a special place.”
She had read an opinion piece earlier this year by activist Bill McKibben, founder of the climate groups 350 and Third Act, that urged Mainers to support the wind port even on Sears Island. McKibben wrote for Mother Jones last year that solving climate change will require a new “yes in my backyard” mindset.
“McKibben wrote that you have to look at the climate as a whole, and this may be a good thing to have here,” Stickler said. “I’m not sure — why did he write that for Maine, he lives in Vermont, but… he said it’s better to have it and it’s better to have it here, maybe.”
Dave Andrews, a retired engineer from South Bristol, Maine, struck a different tone as he trailed after the other birders. He’d worked on Superfund cleanups and brownfield solar projects in his career, and said he’d often heard “not in my backyard” sentiments from neighbors who were worried about viewshed impacts or a change in a place’s character.
“If it’s a Walmart shopping center, I guess you have a valid statement,” he said. “But when it comes to something like this, this is a different balance.”
Andrews called the port’s siting a “terrible dilemma.” But he felt swayed by the urgency of climate change and the fact that the project would leave much of Sears Island intact. As permitting and siting progress in the coming months, he said he hoped others who love the island would be able to accept the sacrifice.
“I don’t think there is a choice,” he said.
This story has been updated to clarify Maine Audubon’s position on the project and to correct Scott Cuddy’s title.
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