Ohio has reviewed more renewable energy permit applications than any other state in a major new study \u2014 61 projects across a six-year span. It has also rejected more projects than any other state, and seen more developers walk away before a decision was even made.<\/p>\n
A Texas-based developer recently declared it would never build in Ohio again, comparing the experience to Russian roulette. New peer-reviewed research covering 19 states reveals what turned the nation\u2019s busiest state permitting pipeline into its most hostile one.<\/p>\n
A national study, one striking outlier<\/p>\n
The peer-reviewed paper, published in Frontiers in Sustainable Energy Policy, analyzed 460 wind and solar projects across 19 states, covering applications filed from 2015 through 2024. Led by a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the study set out to understand timelines and outcomes for state-level permitting decisions. Nationally, the headline finding was relatively reassuring: states approved roughly 90% of applications, with a typical wait of about one year.<\/p>\n
Ohio complicated that picture immediately. The state processed 61 projects \u2014 more than any other in the study \u2014 and posted an 80% approval rate<\/strong> that looks comparable to peers at first glance. But it also led all states with seven outright rejections and five developer withdrawals before any decision was reached. No other state came close on either count.<\/p>\n Senate Bill 52 and the shift that followed<\/p>\n The turning point was 2021, when Ohio\u2019s governor signed Senate Bill 52, giving local governments authority to designate areas within their jurisdictions as off-limits to utility-scale wind and solar development. A grandfathering provision was included, intended to protect projects already in the permitting pipeline. Developers expected their path to approval to remain largely intact.<\/p>\n That expectation proved wrong. Even for grandfathered projects, the Ohio Power Siting Board began giving substantial weight to local opposition<\/strong> \u2014 unanimous opposition made approval effectively impossible, and majority opposition made success unlikely. The board had approved every wind and solar project before it prior to 2021. Rejections then began arriving in quick succession, starting with Republic Wind Farm and Birch Solar. Key lawmakers who helped pass SB 52 have since said this level of deference to local opposition wasn\u2019t what they intended.<\/p>\n Developers push back \u2014 and walk away<\/p>\n Open Road Renewables, a Texas-based developer, became the most public example of the fallout. After one project was rejected and another withdrawn ahead of an anticipated rejection, vice president of development Craig Adair announced the company would pursue no further Ohio projects. \u201cIt\u2019s become a game of Russian roulette, and we\u2019re not going to play it anymore,\u201d<\/strong> Adair said.<\/p>\n Open Road is among several developers with cases pending before the Ohio Supreme Court, challenging what they describe as an arbitrary and inconsistent standard. Adair described how opposition groups have learned to exploit the current environment \u2014 mobilizing at township and commissioner meetings to pressure local officials, effectively killing projects before any formal vote is taken. This is happening, he noted, as Ohio\u2019s electricity demand is rising<\/a>, making the loss of potential generating capacity a practical concern rather than a theoretical one.<\/p>\n The board\u2019s defense and the numbers behind it<\/p>\n The Ohio Power Siting Board pushed back on the study\u2019s framing. Spokesman Matt Butler pointed out that Ohio\u2019s 80% approval rate is comparable to other states in the research, and that the state has approved more than 60 projects in total \u2014 more than any other state studied. Ohio now has 9,250 megawatts of utility-scale solar capacity and 1,550 megawatts of onshore wind<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those figures are real, but they need context. The 80% approval rate spans years when the board approved every single project that came before it; the post-2021 rate is significantly lower<\/strong>, though the study\u2019s structure makes a precise post-SB 52 figure harder to isolate. Comparisons to other states also have limits. Maryland, the second-busiest state with 59 projects and an identical 80% approval rate, had 34 projects still pending at the time of the study \u2014 the highest of any state \u2014 whose outcomes weren\u2019t yet captured in that figure.<\/p>\n Beyond Ohio: what the research reveals about local barriers<\/p>\n Ohio\u2019s situation is the study\u2019s most dramatic finding, but the research points to broader gaps in what\u2019s understood about renewable energy permitting<\/a>. About 40 states have state-level boards or offices overseeing at least some wind and solar projects, yet many delegate authority to local governments, where decisions are far harder to track systematically.<\/p>\n The same research team is now examining local-level permitting in Massachusetts and New York. Early Massachusetts data \u2014 covering 26 projects with complete information out of 42 identified \u2014 found that 16 received permits while the rest were either canceled or caught in litigation. The average permitting timeline was 250 days. Doug Bessette, a Michigan State University professor who studies the social acceptance of renewable energy<\/a>, called Ohio a case study in inconsistent and unfair regulation<\/strong>. \u201cI often tell my students that if they want to see how not to do clean energy, look across the border to Ohio,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n What comes next<\/p>\n