6,000-acre solar project permit nixed by Ohio Supreme Court, for now at least

The Ohio Supreme Court overturned a permit that state officials previously granted to a massive, 6,000-acre industrial-scale solar farm and battery operation in Madison County.

In a ruling Tuesday, a fractured majority of Republican justices sided with a sweeping challenge brought by local and county officials against Oak Run Solar, which would sit in rural farmland between Columbus and Dayton.

This makes for a significant setback but not necessarily a fatal blow to the facility. And it’s the latest in a series of legal roadblocks solar developers have faced from Ohio regulators and now, the state’s high court.

Four justices who formed a majority in the Oak Run case dismissed most of the alleged shortfalls in the solar farm’s application around aesthetics, wildlife and hydrology. However, they ruled that the project application to the Ohio Power Siting Board failed to include project renderings of its substations from public points of view.

The court’s ruling reverses the issuance of the permit and orders the OPSB to “more thoroughly address” the visual impacts of the project.

“By failing to provide any photographic simulations or pictorial sketches from public vantage points that show the substations’ support structures, which appear to be some of the project’s tallest features, Oak Run did not meet the rule’s requirements,” Justice Pat Fischer wrote for the majority.

The ruling is unusual in that over the past few years, it has been the gubernatorial and local appointees of the OPSB rejecting permits for utility-scale solar farms in Ohio. The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected lawsuits challenging several permits granted by the OPSB, but hasn’t yet ruled on multiple
cases brought by developers seeking to reverse an OPSB denial.

Some Republicans on the court wanted to go further. GOP Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy sided with local governments who said the developers failed to provide enough water quality and fire safety information on the operation. She called the court’s opinion “arbitrary and unreasonable” in a partial concurrence opinion.

Justice Jennifer Brunner, the lone Democrat on the court, dissented. She said while developers didn’t include some specific renderings in their application, the OPSB still managed to thoroughly consider the viewshed impacts of a massive project area.

Oak Run Solar

Developers with Oak Run Solar, a project from Savion, a subsidiary of oil giant Shell, say the project would generate 800,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to power 170,000 households.

The site would also include two, 150 megawatt batteries, enabling 24/7 storage alongside a generation operation that only runs during daylight hours.

Plus, the site would be an “agrovoltaic” project, meaning it might include things like beekeeping, sheepgrazing, and groundcover gardening around the project, according to an OPSB writeup of the project.

The developers filed the total cost of the project under seal, meaning it’s not publicly available. But they say they will hire 3,033 construction workers and 63 long-term workers; generate $8.3 million per year in economic output once operational; and pay an estimated $7.2 million in Madison County taxes.

Much of the land is owned by Midwest Farms LLC, which spent millions on the land around 2009, property records show. Business records obtained at the time by the Columbus Dispatch linked Microsoft founder Bill Gates to the entity, but Savion didn’t respond to inquiries about the ruling or the project landowner.

Rough road for solar in Ohio

A mixture of a state law passed in 2021 that favors local opposition over renewable energy development, and a receptive regulatory panel on the OPSB, has repeatedly stymied renewable developers in Ohio.

Since 2020, the OPSB has rejected seven solar farms. In each case, they haven’t identified any technical shortcomings. Rather, the projects haven’t met a requirement to satisfy the “public interest, convenience or necessity” due to the objections raised by township and county officials.

Solar energy has drawn significant grassroots pushback in Ohio. Rural communities have stuffed public hearings around the state to object to permits. Counties and townships have taken to the courts to challenge permits after they’re granted. And last month, Richland County narrowly voted to uphold a ban on wind and solar facilities throughout most of the county.

Republican commissioners in 27 counties around Ohio have banned wind and solar in their jurisdiction. While state laws prohibit this kind of local control on oil or gas projects, the 2021 law passed by statehouse Republicans provided unique powers to local governments to kill wind and solar projects.

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This story was originally published by Signal Ohio and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.