GLOBALVARS
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1. Clark County, Nevada – The first data center approved on federal lands has hit a legal brick wall.
- On Monday, the Townsite 2 solar farm-to-data center environmental review swap I’ve previously covered received a stay from the Interior Department’s board of appeals. David Gunter, a Biden appointee, ruled that the Center for Biological Diversity’s appeal of the permit flip was likely to succeed on the merits because a solar farm … is not a data center. Seems logical!
- As I covered at the time, the Bureau of Land Management approved the environmental review swap claiming that a solar farm and a data center have essentially the same characteristics. It was a bold claim. Both the agency and Townsite said the characteristics would have substantially the same environmental impacts. Gunter shrugged off the claim idea, however, stating that statute requires projects to be both substantially similar and have equally similar impacts under the National Environmental Policy Act.
- Crucially, Gunter also noted that the federal agency had never done an environmental review of any data centers under NEPA, so there’s not even a proper frame of reference. “BLM has not studied the Townsite data center project, or indeed any other data center project, in any environmental document,” he wrote.
2. Jackson County, Missouri – We have yet another high-profile case of a city councilor losing their job over voting for a data center, and this one’s a doozy.
- Voters in the city of Independence, Missouri on Wednesday ousted John Perkins, a city councilor, in a recall election focused on his vote to back tax breaks for a large Nebius data center. The vote was quite resounding, with almost 70% backing the recall. Two other city councilors who voted for the tax abatement were voted out in a separate election earlier this April.
- The data center is still getting built. But this is clear backlash to those who voted for it. This is a great example of public backlash to restarting a gas and coal plant to power a data center, which was the plan for the Nebius facility. Reportedly it will operate at up to nine times the previous capacity of the plant. I cannot imagine how that must make some nearby residents feel.
3. Utah – What’s it take for the Bureau of Land Management to approve a big transmission line for zero-emission energy generation these days? Geothermal, baby.
- This week BLM proposed a more than 300-mile transmission project connecting Millard County, Utah to Clark County, Nevada, where Las Vegas is located. The project would be built by a Pattern Energy subsidiary and connect to geothermal leasing areas in both states. According to the FAST-41 dashboard, the NEPA review process for the line will be approved before the end of Trump’s term.
- All the while, we have seen little progress for transmission lines that would connect to solar energy. The last time BLM approved anything noteworthy for solar-related transmission was last March. Part of me wonders whether the renewables permitting freeze I reported would have the potential to hurt transmission truly has manifested itself, in spite of public rumors to the contrary.
4. Huntsville, Alabama – You can’t even build a tiny battery storage facility in the middle of Alabama anymore.
- Residents in the city of Huntsville on Wednesday successfully got the city utility to relocate a 2-megawatt project in a suburban neighborhood. Fire fears, as always, were to blame.
- Utility-scale battery storage is new to Alabama, in part because of a considerable investment from the Tennessee Valley Authority and Department of Energy. This is the first battery storage conflict I’ve ever seen in Alabama — we haven’t recorded any previous BESS battles there in Heatmap Pro.
- This should not be a surprise, though. Alabama is fast transforming from chill vibes to full-on freakout over data centers and solar farms, so it only stands to reason that we’d see the BESS backlash manifest too.
