Demand for data centers is increasing worldwide, raising questions about the electric grid, the transition to renewable energy, and distribution infrastructure. Northern Virginia is home to data centers that process nearly 70% of global digital traffic, leading officials to call for construction, at ratepayers’ expense, of new power plants and new transmission lines across four states, as well as the continued operation of coal-powered plants that had been scheduled to go offline.

President Biden’s 2021 Executive Order No. 14008 created a new federal legal concept of “energy communities.” The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) further defined this term, with an emphasis on historical dependence on fossil energy industries. This Article summarizes and assesses current law for “energy communities” in the United States, with an emphasis on recent developments and early implementation efforts.

Local opposition to siting of wind and solar energy projects stands to threaten the renewable energy transition in New York State. The state government has sought to quell this opposition by statutorily requiring developers to provide community benefits as a condition of their permits. One way these benefits are secured is through host community agreements (HCAs), with the developer typically agreeing to make payments to the municipality from project revenue in exchange for the municipality promising not to oppose the project during the state permitting process.

Interconnection queues across the United States prevent renewable energy projects from connecting to the grid because of their years-long backlog. Current procedures are increasing the number of projects that withdraw from the queue and the time it takes for renewable projects to seek approval. This Article examines the recent reforms taken by two regional grid operators, the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection (PJM) and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator.

On January 26, 2024, the Biden Administration announced a pause on pending decisions on permits to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to non-free trade agreement countries until the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) updates underlying analyses for the authorizations. The United States is the largest global exporter of LNG, and its exports have rapidly grown over recent years. The pause presents an opportunity to review impacts of increased LNG export, including climate consequences, environmental justice harms, and more.

What this Comment found so compelling in Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help was the human factor—the authors could have written the same article about what is going on in solar, biodigesters, hydro projects, or trash-to-energy projects. There is a good amount of research that could be done as to why this has cropped up recently. The human stories in the article are heartbreaking—this issue is dividing families, and people are being effectively excommunicated from their churches because of what side they are on.

Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help is really important and timely in that it asks some key questions and makes some key points. One of the important observations in the article, and the authors’ rationale for tackling these siting issues, is that if we continue to do things as we have, there will be more renewable energy projects that fail than need to fail. Part of what that means is tackling the conflicts around renewable siting.

Prof. Christiana Ochoa et al.’s Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help is a thought-provoking piece that coincides with significant growth in the wind industry, as well as broad-based expansion of county-level ordinances regulating wind power. It is a useful contribution to the literature and to the conversation around this topic.

Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help disproportionately focuses on the negative and the opposition’s talking points with respect to wind energy projects. While it is important to highlight the challenges we are facing, it is also important to highlight the actual data. For example, the article reiterates a lot of the negative impacts around wildlife, sound, health, aesthetics, shadow flickering, and property values.