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Ohio is poised to block a major solar farm because of local pushback — even though a substantial number of public comments opposing the installation appear to be fabricated.

Open Road Renewables plans to invest roughly $98 million for the 94-megawatt Crossroads Solar Grazing Center, which would use land in three townships in Morrow County, located about an hour north of Columbus.

The project has yet to obtain approval from the Ohio Power Siting Board, the state’s central authority for energy permitting. The evidentiary hearing — a key administrative trial — took place on seven days last month before the power siting board, which is expected to rule in the case by March 19.

To prepare for the hearing, Doug Herling, vice president of Open Road Renewables, reviewed the public comments filed with the power siting board. Beyond dozens of anonymous comments against the project, Herling found at least 34 instances in which people apparently gave false names or lied about their residence in Morrow County.

Each of these comments was negative, including the one purportedly from Roger Willard of Cardington, Ohio, which called ​”industrial solar … a crime against local property owners and the rural way of life we value.” Another, from Mike Mercer, who also claimed to live in Cardington, said, ​”REAL PEOPLE THAT LIVE HERE DO NOT WANT THE SOLAR SCAM!”

Canary Media checked all 34 instances at VoterRecords.com and Whitepages.com and was able to verify the existence of only a single name at its stated town. A message sent to the email address provided for the one exception — someone named Smith — bounced back as undeliverable. As of Jan. 31, Canary Media also found seven more potentially fake comments that had been entered into the board’s online docket since Jan. 13, when Herling began testifying.

“When comments are submitted under false identities, false addresses, or with misrepresented affiliations, it undermines the credibility of the process and is unfair to residents who participated honestly and in food faith,” said Bella Bogin, director of programs at the nonprofit grassroots organizing group Ohio Citizen Action.

It’s just one example of the serious hurdles that renewable energy faces in Ohio, even as the state — like much of the United States — contends with rising electricity demand and energy bills.

Close to 40 county-level bans on new utility-scale solar and wind have cropped up since a 2021 state law authorized such restrictions. Morrow County, the site of Crossroads Solar, adopted bans for a majority of its townships last year.

The law created a carve-out for Crossroads Solar and projects that were already in the grid operator’s queue, but even that limited exception has proved difficult for developers to count on. The power siting board has blocked multiple applications for such grandfathered solar farms, citing local opposition — even when the projects have met all other legal criteria and the permit conditions would have addressed any substantive complaints.

Developers also have withdrawn several applications after staff at the power siting board relied on local government opposition to say solar farms wouldn’t meet a statutory requirement for serving the ​”public interest.” One example is Open Road’s Grange Solar, an agrivoltaics center that most public commenters wanted to move ahead.

The Ohio Supreme Court has yet to rule on other solar farms that the board denied through a final order, despite hearing oral argument on the Kingwood Solar matter last March and another case last month.

Lawmakers at one point considered letting local townships block the power siting board from finding that a solar or wind farm was in the public interest, but they cut that language from the final version of Senate Bill 52 passed in 2021. In practice, however, critics say that’s basically what is happening anyway. On several occasions, the board and its staff have allowed unanimous disapproval by local governments to preclude a public interest finding, often while claiming to use a ​”broad lens.”

While the power siting board’s staff had initially deemed Crossroads Solar in the public interest, it later changed its mind, citing Cardington’s resolution and the township lawyer’s claim of overwhelming opposition by residents. But evidence of overwhelming public opposition is dubious at best.

Taking a closer look at ​”local opposition”

Herling didn’t just question the legitimacy of some of the opposition to Crossroads Solar — he also argued that the data shows that the public actually supports the project.

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.”

Among other things, the anti-solar group Concerned Citizens of Morrow County had claimed multiple times last year that sentiment among residents ran 10-1 against the project — a figure that ultimately did not stand up under cross-examination.

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.”

Original story can be found at https://ohiocapitaljournal.com