Local Communities Challenge Michigan Renewable Energy Siting Law

Join daily news updates from CleanTechnica on e-mail. Or follow us on Google News!

Native management. State rights. Liberty. Freedom. All these phrases have been in pressure in America since earlier than the US got here into being, and so they stay alive and nicely in America in the present day. Native communities in Michigan have initiated a authorized slugfest with the state authorities over a brand new legislation that’s supposed to hurry up the method of constructing new renewable vitality installations. Final 12 months, the Michigan legislature handed a bundle of formidable local weather insurance policies, together with modifications to the applying course of for giant renewable initiatives. A kind of legal guidelines, Public Act 233permits the state to approve utility-scale renewables similar to photo voltaic arrays of no less than 50 megawatts that previously may have been slowed or blocked by native governments. Supporters of the laws believed it will assist the state meet its clear vitality objectives and scale back greenhouse fuel emissions.

Grist stories that about 80 townships and counties are suing the Public Service Commissionthe state’s vitality regulating physique, over the way it plans to grant siting permissions to renewable initiatives. The go well with, filed November 8, 2024, may form how and the place photo voltaic, wind, and battery storage initiatives are developed in Michigan. Whereas that go well with is pending, it’ll gum up the allowing course of for initiatives ready to be authorised. Renewable vitality advocates had excessive hopes that the brand new siting legislation would mark a turning level for Michigan, which has a deep historical past of native management. In crafting PA 233, lawmakers adopted the instance of states like Illinois that in recent times have labored to streamline permitting and curtail the facility of native governments to limit 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 local governments,” Matthew Eisenson, a senior fellow on the Sabin Middle for Local weather Change Regulation at Columbia Regulation Faculty, informed Grist. He advocated for a clarification of Michigan legislation in an effort to guarantee initiatives had been protected against native restrictions. In keeping with the Sabin Middle, on the finish of 2023, no less than 22 clear vitality initiatives had been stalled all through the state by native governments and no less than seven townships had positioned extreme restrictions on creating industrial photo voltaic in areas zoned for agricultural use.

Native Management And Michigan Regulation

Critics of PA 233 declare it wrests management away from the individuals who reside in these areas and native governments that know what’s finest for his or her communities. The lawsuit says the laws promulgated by the PSC to implement that legislation didn’t observe the right rule-making procedures and undermined the native management provisions which are a part of PA 233. Specifically, the go well with challenges the fee’s definition of a “compatible renewable energy ordinance” — an area legislation that complies with particular state tips. PA 233 stipulates that renewable challenge builders first apply regionally so long as the federal government has a suitable ordinance. If that native ordinance is extra restrictive than state legislation, builders can as an alternative apply on to the state for approval.

That left some large questions, says Sarah Mills, a professor of city planning on the College of Michigan who researches how renewable vitality impacts rural communities. She mentioned that whereas elements of PA 233 are clear, such because the sections on setbacks, fencing, peak, 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 mentioned, like whether or not native governments can require timber and bushes or floor cowl.

The Public Service Fee claims that for an area ordinance to be suitable, it may well’t embody restrictions on issues not included within the legislation. The plaintiffs behind the attraction disagree. “That’s not the state of the law, and frankly, it rewrites the legislation, because it doesn’t say that,” mentioned Michael Homier, an lawyer who’s representing the plaintiffs. What it comes all the way down to is the scope of the fee’s authority, he mentioned. Whereas he acknowledges regulators can nonetheless weigh in on functions, the go well with challenges the fee’s broader interpretation of how the legislation ought to work. The legislation consists of charges that renewable vitality builders need to pay to native jurisdictions, presently set at $2,000 per MW. However opponents contend that if there are two or extra jurisdictions concerned — similar to a city and a county — then every needs to be entitled to funds, which might double the amount of cash builders must pay to get their initiatives constructed.

Watchdog teams that observe efforts to oppose renewable vitality initiatives say authorized challenges are a part of coordinated opposition to such improvement. “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,” mentioned researcher Jonathan Kim of the Vitality and Coverage Institute in an e-mail to Grist.

Native Management Can Have Lengthy Coat Tails

In case you fly over the 41-mile-long border between Rhode Island and Connecticut, you will notice … nothing. No cities or cities and just a few roads between them. It seems extra like a demilitarized zone than part of the US. There are historic causes for this and so they relate to the problem of native management. Rhode Island was based by Roger Williams, who believed individuals needs to be free to apply any faith they preferred, which is why the oldest Jewish synagogue in America is in Newport. Quakers, who had been flogged, saved in shares, or subjected to lengthy periods within the dunking chair in Massachusetts, had been welcome in Windfall. Actually, as soon as the Massachusetts Bay Colony ceded management of what it thought was a swampy, bug infested wasteland to Williams, many malcontents in Massachusetts adopted Williams’ lead and relocated to what got here to be referred to as Rhode Island and Windfall Plantations.

There have been so many misfits and cantankerous individuals within the new colony that it rapidly turned referred to as Rogue’s Island. Colonists in Connecticut refused to affiliate with their neighbors to the east. At a time when every colony issued its personal cash, Connecticut retailers refused to just accept Rhode Island forex. Customs stations had been arrange on the border to maintain items from Rhode Island out of Connecticut. The enmity between the individuals within the two colonies meant there was little to no commerce between the 2. The echoes of that separation can nonetheless be seen 300 years later from the air in the present day.

The Takeaway

There’s a big brouhaha about renewables destroying the agricultural character of America. Folks need to see cows, pink barns, and silos, not wind generators, photo voltaic panels, and rows of storage batteries. However local weather change doesn’t care a flying figleaf about such issues. Actually, as extra rural areas are being impacted by punishing droughts or torrential flooding yearly, the look of these rural communities could also be altered completely, and never for the higher. What few opponents to renewables cease to contemplate is what’s going to occur to their communities if farmers are unable to make a residing from the land and transfer away, leaving their farms to fall into disrepair. Opponents one way or the other are unable to see past the tip of subsequent week, probably as a result of a number of the unfavorable messaging about renewables is coming from teams supported by fossil gasoline pursuits, who play on individuals’s feelings somewhat than counting on info.

The technique is to delay, delay, then delay some extra. It’s fairly efficient, sadly, however ultimately the local weather change chickens will come house to roost, and after they do, it will likely be too late to avoid wasting these rural communities from the results of their actions. There may be some cause to hope, nonetheless. Agrivoltaics — a wedding between photo voltaic and farming — can put cash within the pockets of farmers who’re struggling to make a residing and might really make the land extra productive in some instances. The good news about agrivoltaics is starting to unfold within the farming group and it might really be simply what the physician ordered to permit rural communities to thrive regardless of the challenges offered by a warming planet.