After discarding the apparently false, anonymous, and duplicate comments from the same individuals, he found that more than 78% of those who filed remarks favored Crossroads Solar. Support within Morrow County ran above 58%. There was more opposition within the three townships where the project would be built, yet 44% still supported it.
“Sentiment regarding the project is clearly mixed and is not overwhelmingly for or against the project,” Herling testified.
Yet for months, people who wanted to block the array had exaggerated the level of anti-solar opinion and used misinformation to try to build opposition and get local government officials on board, Herling testified. He called the process “bandwagoning.”
Yet by the end of November, after those claims were made, the county and two of three townships had formally opposed Crossroads Solar. The third township, Cardington, was neutral at the time.
A Dec. 5 report by the power siting board’s regulatory staff recommended that the board find that the project would serve the public interest, noting there wasn’t unanimous local government opposition.
But three days later, one Cardington trustee objected to the board’s staff report and changed his stance on Crossroads Solar. The township then formally opposed the project by a 2–1 vote. On Dec. 9, the lawyer for the townships apprised the power siting board of the new resolution and asked for its staff to change the report.
On Jan. 7, Jess Stottsberry, a geologist and utility specialist at the Ohio Power Siting Board, said the staff now believes that Crossroads Solar would not serve the public interest. During cross-examination on Jan. 14, the Cardington resolution was the only specific reason he could cite for the reversal.
“Local popularity contests”
The staff’s flip-flop shows how Ohio’s rigorous review process has become “perverted,” said Craig Adair, vice president of development for Open Road Renewables. “Staff has allowed it to become reduced to local popularity contests, which is highly vulnerable to misinformation [and] manipulation by, in this case, a very small number of anti-solar activists.”
The power siting board “risks abdicating its responsibility as a state regulatory agency when it defers heavily to resolutions passed by a small number of township trustees,” said Bogin of Ohio Citizen Action. Especially in light of Herling’s analysis, she said, “deference to a handful of township resolutions as definitive statements of the ‘public interest’ is not only inappropriate but misleading.”
Most of the seven days of testimony indeed focused on local issues. Yet two witnesses for the Ohio Environmental Council emphasized the broader statewide ramifications.
Jeffrey Reutter, a scientist and the former head of the Ohio Sea Grant Program, testified about the value of renewable energy “to mitigate climate change and contribute to the public interest.”
Andrew Watterson, who heads the consulting firm Blue CSR Strategies, testified that Crossroads Solar will serve the public interest because two-thirds of Ohio’s top 100 employers are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and many need renewable energy. Ohio’s three largest cities and other local governments also need and want renewable power, he said.
And, notably, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce is also a party to the case and is in favor of the project.
In general, the group supports adding more renewable energy as part of an all-of-the-above strategy to meet Ohio’s growing energy needs. But while local sentiment is one issue to consider, it shouldn’t supersede all other factors, said Tony Long, the group’s general counsel and director of energy policy.
“You can’t really do state energy policy township by township, county by county,” Long told Canary Media. “It’s really got to be a state policy.”
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Great Job Kathiann M. Kowalski & the Team @ Canary Media for sharing this story.
