By Hilary Beaumont for Floodlight and Investigate Midwest.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Ohio News Connection reporting for the Investigate Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Solar farms and wind turbines are popping up across America as a new climate law boosts the economics of renewables through billions of dollars of incentives. But in Ohio, one of the most hostile states for renewables, developers are walking a tightrope.

For the first time, renewable energy in the United States is the same price as energy from burning fossil fuels. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — the largest investment in combating climate change in U.S. history — has helped developers by boosting tax credits. 

But solar advocates and developers in Ohio are pessimistic that the IRA will help them overcome fossil fuel-backed opposition groups spreading misinformation about solar and a harsh regulatory regime in the Republican-run state.

“Ohio is probably one of the most biased states in terms of its treatment of renewables as this catastrophic thing that needs to be limited and banned,” said Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group that exposes dark money.

The state has set up an uneven playing field that favors fossil fuels. Ohio rebranded gas as “renewable” energy and passed a law, Senate Bill 52, that gives local governments the power to veto solar and wind farms. No such veto power exists for fossil fuel projects. 

Developers say SB52 is having a chilling effect on solar projects in a state where only 54% of residents believe climate change is caused by human activities — 4 percentage points less than the national average.

“It’s been pretty nuts to watch how far it’s gone,” Anderson said of SB52.

The law is part of a growing wave of organized opposition to renewables in 41 states, resulting in nearly 400 significant local restrictions against wind, solar and other projects, according to a 2024 report by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

How the IRA is playing out in Ohio

At first glance, the Midwestern state might seem like a surprising place for solar. But relatively cheap land, a decent amount of sunshine, plus increasing demand from data centers means solar energy is crucial to meet the state’s future energy needs.

New solar construction in Ohio is set to accelerate to third place among the states by 2027. Ohio recently approved its largest solar installation, the 6,000-acre, 800-megawatt Oak Run project.

Passed in 2022, the IRA is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% compared to 2005 levels. It would do this mostly by creating $270 billion in tax incentives plus $100 billion in other and other federal subsidies for climate and energy spending.

The biggest boost to solar is the extension of the solar investment tax credit for 10 years, creating long term policy certainty for the industry.

Solar projects that meet certain requirements are eligible for a 30% investment tax credit, and another 10% if the project is in a community that historically relied on fossil fuel production — including shuttered coal facilities — to employ local residents.

The extended tax credit is critical for solar farms: While solar manufacturing plants can start turning out parts within a year or two, it can take up to a decade for solar installation to come online.

In Ohio, solar developers say the IRA is creating momentum for projects that face siting hurdles, interconnection delays, supply chain uncertainty, tariffs, high interest rates and inflation.

The IRA is also contributing to the solar boom in Ohio by driving down costs.

“The costs of panels and mounting equipment, and basically everything tied to a solar farm goes down, because in general, these tax credits and incentives for both small and large products are creating an economy of scale,” explained Nolan Rutschilling, managing director of energy policy for the Ohio Environmental Council. “So we’re seeing the economics price out much better for solar projects and clean energy projects in general because of the IRA.”

Solar factories across the state have benefitted from IRA investment, including manufacturing facilities run by Illuminate USA, First Solar and Toledo Solar.

Illuminate USA has already started firing out solar panels, noted Jack Conness, policy analyst at Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology and creator of a map tracking IRA manufacturing spending. 

Illuminate USA also has solar farms in Ohio. “You would hope that creating these (manufacturing) facilities and creating jobs, and hopefully positive conversations around what they’re doing in the community then has some sort of trickle-down impact on solar installations in Ohio,” Conness said.

Lightsource BP, the developer behind three solar farms in Ohio, is seeing benefits from IRA job creation in Ohio, according to Alyssa Edwards, senior vice president of government relations and environmental affairs at Lightsource BP.

“The IRA is bringing benefits to American workers that most definitely is bringing a positive sentiment,” Edwards wrote in an email.

How SB52 blocks solar

While solar development is benefitting from the tailwinds of the IRA, it still faces the headwinds of SB52.

Before SB52 passed in 2021, the Ohio Power Siting Board had exclusive jurisdiction over large energy projects, and counties had no authority to stop them. After SB52 passed, it handed counties new regulatory powers to veto individual projects and establish restricted areas where wind and solar projects are banned.

Now, 24 of Ohio’s 88 counties have restricted areas against solar, according to Matthew Eisenson, senior fellow at the Renewable Energy Legal Defense Initiative at the Sabin Center. He said: “This number is going up.”

Added Eisenson: “A really important feature of SB52 is that this is a carve-out just for wind and solar — it doesn’t apply to fossil fuel projects.”

Led by state agency heads with backgrounds in the environment and agriculture, the Ohio Power Siting Board is equipped to make decisions on solar projects, he said, but commissioners at the county level often lack such expertise. 

“They’re ordinary citizens, elected by their peers,” Eisenson said. “Some of them run on an anti-solar, anti-wind platform. It’s much more of a political decision at the county level.”

When SB52 was proposed, solar developers struck a compromise with the bill’s sponsors, who were sympathetic to the need for business certainty. They grandfathered in projects that had a significant amount of investment and were deep into the study process, meaning they would move forward under the legacy set of rules. 

But new projects that are not grandfathered face the full weight of SB52, meaning they will first be screened by local commissioners before being considered by the Ohio Power Siting Board.

“SB52 adds another hurdle where the county has an opportunity to veto the project or establish a restricted area,” Eisenson explained. “After these grandfathered projects have all been resolved, counties will have the final say on wind and solar projects.” 

In short, the state could see a wave of solar construction, followed by relatively little installation.

The chilling effect of SB52 is already apparent: solar applications filed with the Ohio Power Siting Board decreased sharply the year it was enacted and have not recovered. 

Edwards, of Lightsource BP, didn’t directly comment on SB52, saying only, “As developers of renewable energy, we appreciate a regulatory structure that provides a clear process with certainty and is free from political influence and false narratives.”

Opposition stoked by fossil fuel groups

It was Lightsource BP’s own project, Birch Solar, that became the first large solar project to be rejected by the Ohio Power Siting Board after residents united against it.

In late 2020, opponents began organizing to stop the 300-megawatt, 2,300-acre Birch Solar project near Lima in northern Ohio — starting a Facebook group, establishing Against Birch Solar as an LLC, and launching a GoFundMe to raise $75,000 to fight the project. 

The group moved swiftly to engage with policymakers. In December 2020, the group’s leader Jim Thompson met with the Auglaize County Board of Commissioners to ask the board to pass resolutions against the solar farm. In February 2021, the group held a public meeting to stop Birch Solar, attended by the top two legislative leaders: Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman and Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp. 

Weeks later, lawmakers introduced SB52, which was cosponsored by Huffman. Representatives from Against Birch Solar emailed Huffman and scheduled a meeting with him to show support for the law, according to emails obtained through a public records request. Thompson requested amendments and draft language.

The group listed dozens of concerns, outlined in documents sent to Huffman, including visual issues like “glint and glare,” potential harms to wildlife from construction and fencing, stormwater runoff, decreasing property values and a shift away from farming crops.

Thompson received inspiration from a group that has used a hub-and-spoke model to use disinformation about solar to stoke opposition in at least 12 states. Thompson told Floodlight and NPR that Susan Ralston, founder of Citizens for Responsible Solar, gave him advice and connected him with other anti-solar people in Ohio.

It’s unclear who is funding Citizens for Responsible Solar. While Ralston denied that the group received fossil fuel money, Floodlight and NPR reported that her consulting firm received $300,000 from a foundation with ties to coal companies. And while setting up the group, Ralston consulted with John Droz, an anti-wind strategist connected to the fossil fuel industry.

Thompson did not respond to questions, but denied that Against Birch Solar has ties to dark money.

Ohio has a history of fossil fuel groups supporting anti-renewable activists, according to research by the Energy and Policy Institute. The leader of anti-wind group Save Western Ohio was a paid consultant for a fossil fuel-funded think tank. And coal producer Murray Energy secretly paid an attorney to represent locals in their fight against an offshore wind project in Lake Erie.

Another solar project is facing opposition that critics say is linked to fossil fuel interests. Developers are proposing the Frasier Solar project in Knox County, near the headquarters of Ariel Corp., a major manufacturer in the gas industry.

One opposition group, Knox Smart Development, is linked to Ariel Corp. and the Empowerment Alliance, an anti-renewable dark-money group allied with the gas industry. An early version of the Knox Smart Development site had fingerprints of the Empowerment Alliance, including a hyperlink to The Empowerment Alliance with the words “Our Mission: Empowering America.”

Knox Smart Development has hosted town halls and bought advertising targeting locals. According to Energy News Network, speakers at the events include Tom Whatman, chief strategist of Majority Strategies, the highest paid contractor for The Empowerment Alliance. Knox Smart Development, Ariel Corp. and the Empowerment Alliance did not respond to requests for comment.

“They are a dark money organization that definitely is trying to promote fossil fuels and oppose clean energy,” said Rutschilling of the Ohio Environmental Council. “Yes, it’s a problem, but it also shows that the solar industry is growing and gaining and the fossil fuel industry is threatened by that.”

Some solar developers are pessimistic that IRA incentives can overcome SB52. Edwards of Lightsource BP said: “Unfortunately, I don’t believe they (IRA incentives) are enough to overcome such hurdles.”

But Rutschilling thinks the IRA will help swing public opinion. 

“We’re seeing a number of programs that were created by the IRA that are going to result in a significant amount of economic development and jobs in the state of Ohio,” he said. 

“That will shift the political tide in favor of the clean energy industry.”


Hilary Beaumont wrote this article for Floodlight and Investigate Midwest.


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Advocates and lawmakers want New York's Power Authority to amend its draft plan to build at least 15 gigawatts of renewable energy.

The current draft calls for building 3.5 gigawatts with an expectation the projects will not move ahead. It comes as reports showed the state will not reach its 2030 climate goals at the pace it is currently developing renewables.

Andrea Johnson, a member of the Public Power Coalition, said money is a major reason clean energy development has slowed in New York.

"Private developers are dependent on their investors and there's been issues with the supply chain, and rising costs that they're citing," Johnson observed. "They're basically saying to NYSERDA (the New York State Energy Research Development Authority), who issues the renewable energy credits, 'it's not enough,' so they're canceling the projects."

She pointed out many of these projects are expected to rebid. Another reason is the state needs to build up its transmission infrastructure which has led to a long queue of projects waiting to be connected to the state's electrical grid. However, the RAPID Act, passed in the budget bill, is intended to make clean energy projects' permitting and interconnection more efficient.

The state of New York has many avenues for developing clean energy but Johnson feels the state is at capacity with hydroelectric power. Only last year did the state's first offshore wind come online off the coast of Long Island. She said the power authority must provide greater consideration to clean energy projects at different scales.

"That can mean distributed energy, working with communities rooftop solar. We see a huge opportunity to work with SUNY (State University of New York) and CUNY (City University of New York) campuses," Johnson pointed out. "So, public institutions such as CUNY, SUNY, NYCHA (the New York City Housing Authority), MTA (the Metropolitan Transportation Authority) and municipalities across the state are existing customers."

Johnson thinks the power authority can develop projects on brownfields and other state-owned lands with fewer uses. Building the projects could help the Renewable Energy Access and Community Help program, which reduces energy costs for low-income communities but it only happens if clean energy projects are being built.

By Seth Millstein for Sentient Climate.
Broadcast version by Edwin J. Viera for Connecticut News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

We talk a lot about carbon emissions in the context of climate change, but some of the most dangerous emissions aren't carbon at all. They're methane - a colorless, odorless glass that's primarily produced biologically and warms the planet much faster than carbon dioxide. The Biden administration took some good first steps to reduce America's methane emissions - but will President-elect Donald Trump build upon these steps when he assumes office, or claw back the progress that's been made?

Understanding Methane Emissions

Methane is one of the three main greenhouse gasses, along with carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. The Earth and its various ecosystems produce methane naturally; freshwater lakes, wetlands and permafrost are the primary natural sources of methane. It's also the main component of natural gas.

However, a 2021 United Nations report found that currently, roughly 60 percent of methane emissions are anthropogenic, or the result of human activity. Agriculture produces more methane than any other sector around the world, and around 90 percent of anthropogenic methane emissions come from one of three sources: agriculture, fossil fuels and waste.

The line between anthropogenic and naturogenic (naturally-occurring) methane emissions can be blurry. For instance, a major source of methane is cow burps (and, to a lesser extent, farts). While cows are obviously "naturally-occurring," animal agriculture is not, and neither is the amount of cows we've brought into existence. The sheer amount of methane produced by cows is the result of our domestication of them, not any sort of natural process.

Similarly, methane is the main ingredient in natural gas, and natural gas existed long before humans came around. But it's the extraction of natural gas that actually causes this methane to enter the atmosphere, and natural gas extraction is a human activity.

Semantics aside, one thing is certain: There's a lot more methane in the atmosphere than there would have been had humans never existed. And that's not good.

Why Is Methane a Problem?

Like other greenhouse gasses, methane contributes to climate change by warming the atmosphere and the planet. But it works a bit differently than carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas.

Carbon dioxide makes up almost 80 percent of all greenhouse emissions, whereas methane constitutes just over 11 percent. In addition, methane dissipates rather quickly; it only sticks around in the atmosphere for around a decade, whereas carbon dioxide can linger for up to 1,000 years.

This might have you thinking that methane isn't that big of a deal, at least insofar as greenhouse gasses go. The problem is that methane traps much, much more heat than carbon dioxide - so much so that, over a 100 year period, methane has 27-30 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Over the course of 20 years, it has 80 times the warming potential.

In addition to warming the environment, methane also makes the air dangerous to breathe, because when sunlight interacts with methane, it forms a pollutant called tropospheric ozone. Although tropospheric ozone only stays in the air for a few weeks at most, it can be fatal; it's estimated that up to a million people die every year from respiratory diseases caused by ozone pollution, and methane is a major contributor to this.

How Do Farms Contribute to Methane Emissions?

Around one-third of all anthropogenic methane emissions come from livestock. There are two main reasons for this.

First, there are the burps. A number of animals produce methane as a natural byproduct of their digestive systems; these animals are known as ruminants, and they include not only cows but also sheep, goats, yaks and more. When ruminants burp, they release methane into the air. These are called enteric methane emissions.

The other main source of livestock-related methane emissions is the animals' manure - or, to be more precise, the manner in which farmers store the animals' manure.

Manure management is a significant component of livestock farming. One of the more common ways of storing manure is to put it in large lagoons or pits; this prevents it from leaking into nearby soil and waterways, and also allows farms to more accurately monitor and track their farms' manure output.

Over time, however, the top layer of manure in the lagoon hardens, which prevents oxygen from reaching the manure below. And this is a problem, because when manure is placed in an oxygen-free environment, the microorganisms that produce methane thrive and proliferate, thus increasing its methane emissions. That's exactly what happens in manure pits.

These two factors - enteric emissions and manure (mis)management - account for 80 percent of agriculture-related methane emissions. The other 20 percent comes from rice farming. Rice is a semi-aquatic plant that requires a layer of standing water to grow; this water prevents oxygen from reaching the microbes in the soil, allowing them to reproduce and create methane in a manner similar to manure in a lagoon.

The problem of livestock-related methane emissions is exacerbated by the fact that global meat production has been on the rise for the last 60 years, on both an absolute and per-capita level. This makes reducing these missions all the more important - but how?

How Can Farmers Reduce Their Methane Emissions?

A number of solutions have been proposed, and in some cases implemented, for reducing methane emissions.

Many of these involve new or emerging technologies. There are feed additives that reduce the amount of enteric methane production in ruminants' stomachs, for instance, and manure aeration systems that allow oxygen to flow into stored manure on farms. One company is even developing a methane-trapping mask for cattle to wear while grazing.

Other methane reduction strategies are decidedly more low-tech, such as selectively breeding animals to produce less methane. Simply making livestock farms more efficient on the whole can also have an impact, as this results in increased output with no corresponding increase in methane emissions.

All of these solutions, however, face obstacles. Fernanda Ferreira, Director for Agriculture Methane at Clean Air Task Force, tells Sentient that one of the biggest challenges in methane mitigation is the simple fact that production facilities and logistical operations vary wildly from farm to farm.

"Let's look at the U.S.," Ferreira says. "When you think about goats, sheep, beef and dairy farmers, you have a little over a million farmers. So we're talking about one million different ways of managing these animals. Even if you zoom in into one specific region - let's say the West, or a state like California - there will be variation."

This variation, Ferreira says, complicates efforts to implement methane mitigation technologies on a wide scale, because every farm is a unique operation with slightly different needs, capabilities and restrictions.

"When you zoom in, you have a lot of variation of how farmers handle these animals," Ferreira says. "And this is directly linked to the challenge of adopting [methane reduction] technologies."

Another major challenge is cost. Many of these solutions are expensive, and the cost of implementing them falls on the farmers themselves. But while methane reduction benefits all of humanity in the long run, it doesn't offer farmers any benefit in the short run. As such, farmers largely aren't incentivized to adopt these technologies.

Lastly, there's the simple fact that a lot of this technology is still in the research and development phase. As of this writing, only one synthetic methane-reducing feed additive has been approved by the FDA, and that approval only came six months ago. Other proposed additives are prohibitively expensive, not very effective or come with other drawbacks. The methane-trapping cow mask also has several logistical issues, and has been criticized as a potential form of greenwashing.

What Has President Biden Done About Methane?

In 2021, the Biden administration unveiled the U.S. Methane Emissions Action Plan, a 20-page document with various initiatives and proposals for reducing U.S. methane emissions. They include incentives for farmers to reduce their methane emissions, new regulations aimed at doing the same, and the formation of an interagency task force to collect methane and use it for "on-farm renewable activities."

"The U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan provides the framework for the work on agriculture methane emissions," Ferreira says. "The most important outcome that it supports is the deployment of climate smart-initiatives, such as the use of methane-reducing feed additives and the implementation, more broadly, of manure management practices."

In 2023, the Biden administration announced The National Strategy to Advance an Integrated U.S. Greenhouse Gas Measurement, Monitoring, and Information System (yes, that's the official name). This set of policies is geared at improving the tracking, monitoring and reporting of greenhouse emissions, both inside and outside of the government.

These two action plans, Ferreira says, are important first steps in tackling the methane problem-head on. In addition to all of this, the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, contained funding for a selection of "climate-smart" agricultural practices, including some aimed at reducing methane emissions from farms.

The Inflation Reduction Act also expanded the EPA's authority to regulate methane emissions, and created the Methane Emissions Reduction Program for the purpose of doing so. The Biden administration allocated $1 billion to this program in 2023, and in December, introduced new limits on methane emissions via the EPA.

However, these initiatives only apply to the oil and gas industries, so they won't have any effect on agricultural methane emissions.

What Will Trump Do About Methane?

Methane emissions weren't a central focus of the 2024 campaign, or even a tertiary one, and President-elect Trump made no policy pledges regarding methane. However, actions that he took as president during his first term strongly suggest that he'll seek to undo the Biden administration's progress on methane reduction.

During his time in office, Trump withdrew or weakened a number of federal regulations aimed at tracking and reducing methane emissions, including Obama-era rules that required oil and gas companies to monitor and fix methane leaks at their facilities and take steps to reduce methane emissions on public and tribal lands.

After Trump's 2024 victory, the Biden administration finalized a rule that fines oil and gas companies for their methane emissions, and there's been widespread speculation that Trump will scrap this rule once he assumes office.

Trump, who once said that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by China to make U.S. manufacturing less competitive, withdrew or weakened over 100 environmental regulations during his first term. Nothing he's said or done indicates that he's changed his tune on climate matters since then, so it seems likely that he'll continue rolling back environmental protections, including those aimed at reducing methane emissions.

While this would be unfortunate, Trump is just one person, and America is just one country. There are plenty of other leaders around the world, both in the private and public sectors, making efforts to curb methane emissions.

Canada, Mexico, Japan and several other countries have made significant investments in methane reduction as part of the Global Methane Pledge, for instance. In addition, almost 100 mayors around the world have pledged to reduce their cities' emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement, which Trump withdrew the U.S. from. Meanwhile, Bill Gates has invested millions in a feed additive company aimed at reducing enteric methane production in livestock.

There are, in other words, plenty of opportunities for global action on methane that don't involve the U.S. president.

The Bottom Line

Reducing methane emissions is no easy task; there are technological, financial, logistical and even dietary hurdles. But given methane's rapid-fire warming potential, overcoming these obstacles isn't optional, but necessary.

Our planet won't remain liveable for future generations without a sharp reduction in methane emission. The Biden administration took some good first steps in bringing about such a reduction, and hopefully, more steps from other world leaders will follow, even if the Trump administration rolls back progress on the issue.


Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


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Connecticut is the subject of an offshore wind study which aims to identify supply chain opportunities for the state and the Northeast region.

Connecticut is committed to creating 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2040. So far, it has procurements for 1.5 gigawatts of offshore wind. The state's first offshore wind farm will be operational next year.

Kristin Urbach, executive director of the Connecticut Wind Collaborative, said the study can explore many offshore wind priorities.

"To pinpoint areas where supply chains currently fall short to propose actionable items to strengthen it," Urbach explained. "Also to boost our local economic growth with the support of local manufacturers for its infrastructure development while promoting job creation and sustainable growth in Connecticut."

Urbach pointed out the state can fill supply chain gaps by utilizing the 12,000-person shipbuilding and repair industry. Some experts believe tapping into this workforce can build up offshore wind development.

Connecticut's offshore wind future is strained. Gov. Ned Lamont paused a multistate deal, delaying Connecticut's ability to reach its 2030 goals. The study's findings will be released next spring.

Similar studies are underway in Louisiana, Maine, and South Carolina. Like them, Connecticut can generate sizable amounts of offshore wind power.

Courtney Durham Shane, senior climate mitigation officer for the Pew Charitable Trusts, said offshore wind has quickly become a lucrative business nationwide.

"The United States has already seen $25 billion in offshore wind supply chain investment to date," Durham Shane noted. "Projections are showing that there could be upwards of $100 billion in private investment and nearly 50,000 jobs that are up for grabs domestically."

The New London State Pier terminal became the first East Coast offshore wind marshaling terminal with unobstructed ocean access. It can speed along the staging and assembly of several states' offshore wind projects. New York State's first offshore wind farm created 75 jobs at the facility, a number which is slated to double.