Supreme Court of Ohio reverses permit for Oak Run Solar site
The Supreme Court of Ohio has cut down a previously approved permit for Madison County’s Oak Run Solar project, which would have been the largest solar installation in the history of the state. The court’s majority claim that the project’s permit application did not meet the Ohio Power Siting Board’s (OPSB) submission requirements in full.
Backed by Savion Renewable Energy, a subsidiary of oil and gas giant Shell, the 6,000-acre project would have generated about 800 MW of renewable energy for the Buckeye State. Additionally, the site was equipped with 300 MW worth of battery storage capacity, according to site officials.
“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,” wrote Justice Pat Fischer in the case’s final majority decision.
Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy offered a partial concurrence with Fischer and the majority decision. The court’s lead judge sided with the local governments who have said that Savion, the project’s current developers, failed to provide fire safety and water quality impact information about the project. However, she ultimately wrote that the court’s majority opinion — that the developers did not provide enough information regarding the project’s height — was “arbitrary and unreasonable.”
Justice Jennifer Brunner, the seven member court’s lone Democrat, also offered a partial dissension to the court’s opinion, writing that the OBSP “had before it adequate information from which to determine the visual impacts of the proposed project.”
“The record contains sufficient depictions of intervening appellee Oak Run Solar Project, L.L.C.’s proposed major utility facility from numerous public vantage points,” she says. “I therefore concur in part in and dissent in part from the court’s judgment and would affirm the board’s orders granting Oak Run’s application for a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need to construct a solar-powered electric generation facility.”
A second look
In the court’s decision, the justices order the siting board to “more thoroughly address” some of the purely visual impacts of the project. However, it is crucial to note that this decision does not outright kill the Oak Run Solar project, and that the opportunity is still open to solar developers around Ohio and the surrounding area.
Oak Run Solar presents a unique opportunity for developers, as the potential site represents one of the largest agrivoltaics projects in the U.S. The solar farming practice has become one of the solar industry’s driving forces in recent years, with Silicon Ranch helping with a massive project earlier this year.
In addition to the farming-related benefits, the utility-scale project would provide enough power for about 170,000 Ohioan homes, and $7.2 million in tax revenue for the county over and estimated 35 years.
The project’s size will create more than 3,000 construction jobs, according to the project’s original filing with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. Filed in 2023, the document also states that it will create 63 long-term operational and maintenance jobs once fully online. However, Republican commissioners from 27 counties — about 30% of the state — have banned solar and wind projects in their jurisdictions, according to the Associated Press.
