U.S. Domestic Solar Production Reaches Historic Milestone Washington, D.C. – The United States has surpassed 50 GW in domestic solar energy manufacturing capacity for the first time in history, enough to power approximately 37.5 million homes. This milestone marks an impressive progress—bolstered by clean energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—by the renewable energy …
A bill that would empower Wisconsin municipalities to block the construction of solar and wind farms in their backyards has been introduced a second time.
Currently, local governments possess limited authority to regulate the siting and operations of solar and wind farms, but as the number and size of projects grow — solar panel fields spanning thousands of acres and wind turbines as tall as the Statue of Liberty — some residents from the Driftless Area and central Wisconsin say the state’s system for approving energy projects unfairly stacks the scales of power against communities that live alongside the facilities.
Meanwhile, a clean energy advocacy group and former Wisconsin utility regulator said the bill would enable a discontented minority to dictate energy policy for the entire state, effectively kill renewable energy development and generate uncertainty for businesses.
The Republican-backed proposal comes amid a wave of construction after federal lawmakers invested billions of dollars during the Biden administration to slow the pace of climate change. The ensuing backlash and enactment of local restrictions are playing out across the country.
Here’s what you need to know:
Some context: Investment in renewable energy has been a state priority for decades and a requirement for Wisconsin’s utilities. It also is central to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ ambitious climate goals. Wisconsin seeks to operate a carbon-free electric grid by 2050.
In 2023, 9% of net electricity generated within the state came from renewable sources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The governor’s Task Force on Climate Change expects most future emissions reductions to come from large-scale utility projects, especially the replacement of aging coal plants with solar farms.
In 2016, the state generated just 3,000 megawatt-hours of electricity from utility-scale solar facilities. Seven years later, it increased to 1.2 million. Nearly two dozen more solar farms are in the pipeline.
Wisconsin’s utility regulator, the Public Service Commission, oversees the approval of large projects, but opponents say gaps in state oversight make Wisconsin attractive to private developers, who aren’t mandated to share project expenses or evaluate ratepayer impacts.
They don’t have to demonstrate the energy created by the new installation is even needed at all — requirements if a public utility were to construct the facility. (The commission considers costs when utilities want to purchase power or an energy facility.) But developers can sell solar and wind farms to Wisconsin utilities. Ratepayers shoulder the infrastructure costs and pay state-authorized rates of return.
The commission reports that, compared to the Midwest and national averages, Wisconsin residents pay higher rates but less on their monthly bills because they consume less energy.
Opponents of large-scale projects also criticize the state’s disclosure requirements, which enable developers to acquire land rental agreements, often confidential, before communities are officially notified.
Residents often accuse industry of minimizing their concerns over impacts to wildlife, roads, aesthetics, property values, utility bills, health, topsoil and water quality.
Yet climate change jeopardizes those same things, and land rental and municipal payments can be a lifeline. The construction of solar and wind farms can divide towns and neighbors. Public hearings quickly get messy.
Organizers have mounted challenges, playing out in boardrooms, courthouses and the Legislature. Several towns enacted restrictions on renewable energy projects, a push supported by Farmland First, a central Wisconsin advocacy and fundraising group. Last year, a developer sued two Marathon County towns over their wind farm rules.
President Donald Trump is the latest to seed doubt over the merits of large-scale renewable projects after issuing a Jan. 20 executive order that suspends federal permitting for any wind farm while agency officials review government leasing and permitting practices.
The bill: The proposal requires solar and wind developers to obtain approval from every city, village and town in which a facility would be located before the Public Service Commission could greenlight the project.
Senate Bill 3’s authors, Rep. Travis Tranel, R-Cuba City, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, said the measure responds to constituents who feel their concerns over continued development in the Driftless Area continue to fall on deaf ears.
“We are hoping to kick-start a conversation because the way I view it now, renewable energy projects are essentially the wild wild West,” Tranel said. “People have figured out that they can profit exorbitant amounts of money off these projects, and they are just popping them up left and right, and our current attitude is long-term ramifications be damned, and I don’t think that that makes any sense.”
Currently, the commission reviews proposals for energy facilities with a capacity of at least 100 megawatts. For scale, an average wind turbine in 2023 had a capacity of 3 ½ megawatts. A megawatt of solar generation might cover 7 ½ acres.
Local governments review projects less than 100 megawatts in capacity, but municipalities can impose restrictions on solar and wind farms only in limited instances, such as demonstrating they will protect public health or safety — a tall order. Additionally, municipalities that enact siting restrictions on wind farms cannot impose criteria more stringent than commission rules.
The bill would apply to any solar or wind farm with a 15-megawatt capacity or more. If a municipality fails to take action within an allotted period, the proposed facility would be approved automatically.
An identical proposal introduced during the previous legislative session, exclusively backed by GOP lawmakers, failed to receive a committee hearing.
Yea: Some of the bill’s backers view the influx of large energy projects as the harbinger of “utility districts” across Wisconsin’s rural spaces, primarily for the benefit of urbanites.
It’s not that proponents of local control snub clean energy, said Chris Klopp, a Cross Plains organizer who has joined challenges to transmission and solar projects. Rather, regulators could respond to climate change more equitably.
“This idea that you can just decide you’re going to sacrifice certain people, well, I think there’s a problem with that,” she said. “Who decides, and who gets sacrificed? None of that is a good conversation. It should be something that works for everyone.”
Nay: Representatives from EDP Renewables, NextEra Energy, Pattern Energy and Invenergy — developers with a Wisconsin presence — didn’t respond to requests for comment.
But former Public Service Commission Chair Phil Montgomery said local governments lack the agency’s battery of professionals it takes to evaluate whether an energy project would meet the state’s energy needs.
Empowering Wisconsin’s 1,245 towns, 190 cities and 415 villages to weigh the facts against their own standards would spell disaster for ratepayers, he said.
Michael Vickerman, former executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a renewable energy advocacy nonprofit, said the bill unfairly targets wind and solar.
“You’re deciding that this industry will no longer be welcome in this state,” he said. “It becomes such an arbitrary and mysterious, unstable, unpredictable process that the developer says, ‘Screw it. I’ll just go to Minnesota. I’ll go to Illinois.’”
What’s next? More than 20 co-sponsors, all Republicans, signed on to the bill, and it has been referred to a Senate committee. Klopp hopes to rally more lawmakers to obtain a two-thirds, veto-proof majority.
Montgomery said even if it leads nowhere, the bill certainly sends a message to investors.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify information provided by former Public Service Commission Chair Phil Montgomery.
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Updated Western Solar Plan to guide responsible development in 11 Western states WASHINGTON — The Department of the Interior today announced an updated Western Solar Plan to help guide efficient and environmentally responsible solar energy permitting on public lands across the West. ?The plan will guide the siting of solar energy proposals in areas with fewer resource conflicts, advance the nation’s growing clean energy economy, help lower energy costs …
A new contract between Kalamazoo, Michigan, and utility Consumers Energy signals a change in direction for the city’s clean energy strategy as it seeks to become carbon neutral by 2040.
Solar was seen as a pillar of the city’s plans when it declared a climate emergency in 2019 and set a goal of zeroing out carbon emissions by 2040. After spending years exploring its options, though, the Michigan city is tempering a vision for rooftop solar in favor of large, more distant solar projects built and owned by the utility. It’s not alone either, with Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Muskegon and other cities taking a similar approach.
“Folks want to see solar panels on parking lots and buildings, but there’s no way as a city we can accomplish our net-zero buildings just putting solar panels on a roof,” said Justin Gish, Kalamazoo’s sustainability planner. “Working with the utility seemed to make the most sense.”
Initially there was skepticism, Gish said — “environmentalists tend to not trust utilities and large corporate entities” — but the math just didn’t work out for going it alone with rooftop solar.
The city’s largest power user, the wastewater treatment pumping station, has a roof of only 225 square feet. Kalamazoo’s largest city-owned roof, at the public service station, is 26,000 square feet. Spending an estimated $750,000 to cover that with solar would only provide 14% of the power the city uses annually — a financial “non-starter,” he said.
So the city decided to partner with Consumers Energy, joining a solar subscription program wherein Kalamazoo will tell Consumers how much solar energy it wants, starting in 2028, and the utility will use funds from its subscription fee to construct new solar farms, like a 250-megawatt project Consumers is building in Muskegon.
Under the 20-year contract, Kalamazoo will pay a set rate of 15.8 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) — 6.4 cents more than what it currently pays — for 43 million kWh of solar power per year. If electricity market rates rise, the city will save money, and Kalamazoo receives Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to help meet its energy goals.
The subscription is expected to eliminate about 80% of Kalamazoo’s emissions from electricity, Gish said. The electricity used to power streetlights and traffic signals couldn’t be covered since it is not metered. As the city acquires more electric vehicles — it currently has two — electricity demand may increase, but city leaders hope to offset any increases by improving energy efficiency of city buildings.
Consumers Energy spokesperson Matt Johnson said the company relies “in part” on funds from customers specifically to build solar and considers it a better deal for cities than building it themselves, “which would be more costly for them, and they have to do their own maintenance.”
“We can do it in a more cost-effective way, we maintain it, they’re helping us fund it and do it in the right way, and those benefits get passed on to arguably everybody,” Johnson said.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, joined the subscription program at the same time as Kalamazoo. Corporate customers including 7-Eleven, Walmart and General Motors are part of the same Consumers Energy solar subscription program, as is the state of Michigan.
Costs and benefits
“There’s a growing movement of cities trying to figure out solar — ‘Yes we want to do this, it could save us money over time, but the cost is prohibitive,’” said John Farrell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Until the Inflation Reduction Act, cities couldn’t directly access federal tax credits. The direct-pay incentives under the IRA have simplified financing, Farrell said, but cities still face other financial and logistical barriers, such as whether they have sufficient rooftop space.
Advocates acknowledge deals with utilities may be the most practical way for budget-strapped cities to move the needle on clean energy, but they emphasize that cities should also strive to develop their own solar and question whether utilities should charge more for clean power that is increasingly a cheaper option than fossil fuels.
“Our position is rooftop and distributed generation is best — it’s best for the customers, in this case the cities; it’s best for the grid because you’re putting those resources directly on the grid where it’s needed most; and it’s best for the planet because it can deploy a lot faster,” said John Delurey, Midwest deputy director of the advocacy group Vote Solar. “I believe customers in general and perhaps cities in particular should exhaust all resources and opportunities for distributed generation before they start to explore utility-scale resources. It’s the lowest hanging fruit and very likely to provide the most bang for their buck.”
Utility-scale solar is more cost-effective per kilowatt, but Delurey notes that when a public building is large enough for solar, “you are putting that generation directly on load, you’re consuming onsite. Anything that is concurrent consumption or paired with a battery, you are getting the full retail value of that energy. That is a feature you can’t really beat no matter how good the contract is with some utility-scale projects that are farther away.”
Delurey also noted that Michigan law mandates all energy be from clean sources by 2040; and 50% by 2030. That means Consumers needs to be building or buying renewable power, whether or not customers pay extra for it.
“So there are diminishing returns (to a subscription deal) at that point,” Delurey said. “You better be getting a price benefit because the power on their grid would be clean anyways.”
“Some folks are asking ‘Why do anything now? Just wait until Consumers cleans up the grid,’” Gish acknowledged. “But our purchase shows we have skin in the game.”
A complement to rooftop
In 2009, Milwaukee adopted a goal of powering 25% of city operations — excluding waterworks — with solar by 2025. The city’s Climate and Equity Plan adopted in 2023 also enshrined that goal.
For a decade, Milwaukee has been battling We Energies over the city’s plan to install rooftop solar on City Hall and other buildings through a third-party owner, Eagle Point Solar. The city sought the arrangement — common in many states — to tap federal tax incentives that a nonprofit public entity couldn’t reap. But We Energies argued that third party ownership would mean Eagle Point would be acting as a utility and infringing on We Energies’ territory. A lawsuit over Milwaukee’s plans with Eagle Point is still pending.
In 2018 in Milwaukee, We Energies launched a pilot solar program known by critics as “rent a roof,” in which the utility leased rooftop space for its own solar arrays. Advocates and Milwaukee officials opposed the program, arguing that it encouraged the utility to suppress the private market or publicly owned solar. In 2023, the state Public Service Commission denied the utility’s request to expand the program.
Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board opposed the rent-a-roof arrangement since it passed costs it viewed as unfair on to ratepayers. But Wisconsin CUB Executive Director Tom Content said the city’s current partnership with We Energies is different since it is just the city, not ratepayers, footing the cost for solar that helps the city meet its goals.
Solar panels atop Milwaukee’s Central Library. (City of Milwaukee)
Milwaukee is paying about $84,000 extra per year for We Energies to build solar farms on a city landfill near the airport and outside the city limits in the town of Caledonia. The deal includes a requirement that We Energies hire underemployed or unemployed Milwaukee residents.
The Caledonia project is nearly complete and will provide over 11 million kWh of energy annually, “enough to make 57 municipal police stations, fire stations and health clinics 100% renewable electricity,” said Milwaukee Environmental Collaboration Office director Erick Shambarger.
The landfill project is slated to break ground in 2025. The two arrays will total 11 MW and provide enough power for 83 city buildings, including City Hall – where Milwaukee had hoped to do the rooftop array with Eagle Point.
Meanwhile, Milwaukee is building its own rooftop solar on the Martin Luther King Jr. library and later other public buildings, and Shambarger said the city will apply for direct pay tax credits made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act — basically eliminating the need for a third-party agreement.
“Utility-scale is the complement to rooftop,” said Shambarger. “They own it and maintain it, we get the RECs. It worked out pretty well. If you think about it from a big picture standpoint, to now have the utility offer a big customer like the city an option to source their power from renewable energy — that didn’t exist five years ago. If you were a big customer in Wisconsin five years ago, you really had no option except for buying RECs from who knows where. We worked hard with them to make sure we could see our renewable energy being built.”
We Energies already owns a smaller 2.25 MW solar farm on the same landfill, under a similar arrangement. Building solar on the landfill is less efficient than other types of land since special mounting is needed to avoid puncturing the landfill’s clay cap, and the panels can’t turn to follow the sun. But Shambarger said the sacrifice is worth it to have solar within the city limits, on land useful for little else.
“We do think it’s important to have some of this where people can see it and understand it,” he said. “We also have the workforce requirements, it’s nice to have it close to home for our local workers.”
Madison is also pursuing a mix of city-owned distributed solar and utility-scale partnerships.
On Earth Day 2024, Madison announced it has installed 2 MW of solar on 38 city rooftops. But a utility-scale solar partnership with utility MGE is also crucial to the goal of 100% clean energy for city operations by 2030. Through MGE’s Renewable Energy Rider program, Madison helped pay for the 8 MW Hermsdorf Solar Fields on a city landfill, with 5 MW devoted to city operations and 3 MW devoted to the school district. The 53-acre project went online in 2022.
Farrell said such “all of the above” approaches are ideal.
“The lesson we’ve seen generally is the more any entity can directly own the solar project, the more financial benefit you’ll get,” he said. “Ownership comes with privileges, and with risks.
“Energy is in addition to a lot of other challenging issues that cities have to work on. The gold standard is solar on a couple public buildings with battery storage, so these are resiliency places if the grid goes down.”
A new study on behalf of Milliken has identified the top U.S. states for sustainable energy production. The rapid rise of the sustainable energy sector worldwide has been one of the most important technological and economic stories of recent years. Continued urgency to mitigate the impact of climate change has spurred governments and companies to speed the transition …
Developed by NuGen Capital Management, the Bristol Landfill Solar Project will generate enough renewable energy to power 700+ homes and businesses. Bristol, R.I. (July 25, 2024)— The Bristol Landfill Solar Project, Rhode Island’s largest closed landfill solar site, is officially operational. NuGen Capital Management, LLC, the project developer, joined Toray Plastics (America), Inc. and other partners …
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