When NIMBYs Show Up to Block Local Clean Energy Projects, This Group Can Help

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A large majority of people tell pollsters they support renewable energy. But when ordinances and projects come before local governments, opponents show up more often than supporters.

Greenlight America, a new national nonprofit, wants to change this. I spoke with its co-founders this week in one of their first interviews about their mission and strategy.

The group launched last year, has raised $5 million and has a staff of about 20. It is incorporated in Washington, DC, with employees all over the country.

Matt Traldi, CEO and co-founder, said he takes inspiration from the way the labor movement prioritizes local voices and focuses on organizing. He was a co-founder of Indivisible, an advocacy group formed to counter the policy agenda of Donald Trump, and previously he spent a decade working for labor unions.

“There’s a lot of support out there for clean energy projects,” he said. But he found that supporters sometimes “don’t know when and where to show up.”

The stakes are high. The United States needs to add vast amounts of renewable energy to be able to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and avoid the worst effects of climate change. Local opposition has slowed or canceled many projects.

Greenlight America aims to alert local groups and people of the issues in their communities, and foster greater participation by people who support a shift to cleaner energy.  “The reality is that most people aren’t reading agendas or minutes of their local government proceedings, and most organizations in the nonprofit space aren’t focused at the local level,” said Ari Appel, chief program officer and co-founder.

He previously ran campaigns for environmental and renewable advocacy organizations, such as Building Back Together, which seeks to support the implementation of President Joe Biden’s climate and clean energy legislation.

Ethan Todras-Whitehill, chief communications officer and co-founder, said Greenlight wants to give renewable energy supporters “the information and the training they need to feel comfortable going up there and standing up in front of their town council.”

He previously founded Swing Left, which works to elect Democrats in state legislatures.

While the co-founders have deep ties to groups that support Democrats, they emphasized that Greenlight is nonpartisan. Public opinion research, such a 2023 report from Pew Research Center, shows that support for renewable energy is strong across partisan lines.

And yet opponents of renewable energy projects are often highly organized at the local level to the point that supporters of projects feel ostracized and are reluctant to speak.

People fight renewable energy for a variety of reasons. The most common one I’ve observed is concern about how a project will change the look and feel of a place, which is something I can sympathize with, especially for people who live closest to the site. The benefits of development—for the environment and the local tax base—get talked about much less.

One way to think about Greenlight is as a counterweight to groups that oppose renewable energy, such as Virginia-based Citizens for Responsible Solar.

“We’re very much students of the opposition,” said Traldi, the CEO. He compared this to how Indivisible took lessons from how the Tea Party movement organized against President Barack Obama.

But it would be an oversimplification to say Greenlight is a pro-renewables version of groups that oppose the projects. Opposition organizations tend to focus on disseminating misleading information to make people fear renewable energy. A common message is to say or imply that solar farms are a threat to human health—which isn’t true.

In contrast, Greenlight views itself as more of an organizer and convener, and won’t necessarily get into the specifics of what is discussed in local campaigns.

An example is how the group participated in a debate this year in Erie County, Pennsylvania: The County Council was considering revisions to its solar ordinance that contained a provision saying a project needed to have an interconnection agreement with the regional grid operator to be able to apply for a building permit.

The provision would essentially shut down new permits because the grid operator is working through a years-long backlog of processing applications for interconnection. In most other jurisdictions, a developer would get their building permit at the same time they are waiting in a queue for grid access.

It’s not clear to me whether the proposal was a deliberate attempt to hinder development. Regardless, Greenlight learned of it and then got in touch with groups that typically support renewable energy to speak to the County Council.

Records from council meetings show that local representatives from Solar United Neighbors and PennFuture, nonprofits that support renewable energy development, spoke about what the proposal would do and urged the council to remove the provision. The council followed this advice.

“A coalition came together really quickly,” said Jenny Tomkins, a PennFuture clean water campaign manager, who is based near Erie.

The ability of local and national groups to collaborate was essential and Greenlight helped to bring the parties together, she said.

“Local folks provide firsthand knowledge of the proposed projects, community concerns and tight-knit relationships with local elected officials,” she said. “The statewide and national groups bring lessons learned from other communities, relationships with the solar industry and legal and policy expertise.”

Greenlight’s agenda overlaps with that of renewable energy developers, but it doesn’t take money from developers. This is an important distinction because opposition campaigns like to say supporters are acting out of financial self-interest.

Success for the organization means local people show up to participate, and this helps to nudge officials. Don’t expect Traldi or his colleagues to stand up to speak in your town. But if Greenlight can find ways to fill seats and dockets, it could change the dynamics of local debates.