Columbus Solar Park in landfill is dying due to lack of action by BQ Energy

Urban solar farm project collapsed, says SWACO

The Central Ohio Solid Waste Authority has canceled a $70 million project to create a 50-megawatt solar panel farm that could provide electricity to about 5,000 homes in Columbus.

This means that another of the planned sources for the city’s green energy aggregation program, powered by AEP, has been decommissioned, further delaying the city’s commitment to provide 100% of the program’s energy needs with locally produced green energy.

On Thursday, SWACO sent a registered letter to the solar park’s developer, BQ Energy Development, LLC., stating that the land lease could be automatically terminated “as a result of (the company’s) failure to commence operations on the required date.” “

“While SWACO is disappointed that the project failed to meet our redevelopment and renewable energy goals, we remain committed to converting the closed landfill into a solar array and will explore options available to us to realize our vision for the site and produce green energy for Franklin County families and businesses,” Hanna Greer-Brown, a SWACO spokeswoman, said in an email.

BQ Energy, a New York-based developer of the Wappingers Falls solar farm that specializes in building facilities on landfills and brownfield sites, did not return telephone messages to its office.

In a widely publicized 2020 deal, SWACO agreed to lease 173 acres of a closed landfill northeast of the intersection of I-71 and I-270 on the city’s south side to BQ Energy for 25 years. This was expected to generate approximately $12 million in projected rental fees for the agency. SWACO began managing the landfill in 1987, and in 2000 the site was renamed Phoenix Links Golf Course. However, the golf course closed in 2015 because no company wanted to operate it.

Although the solar farm was initially expected to produce electricity by 2022, SWACO gave BQ until last summer to complete construction. Greer-Brown said the project received a one-year extension last year.

“This public-private partnership benefits the entire community and sends a strong message about Central Ohio,” said Ty Marsh, former SWACO executive director, in a July 2020 Dispatch opinion essay. “… (It) will strengthen our community’s commitment to sustainability and its development, and remind us that Columbus is a smart city that uses ingenuity to improve quality of life.”

The cancellation of the elevated landfill project comes as the city’s electric aggregation program, which supplies more than 200,000 residential customers and small businesses in Columbus, is struggling to keep its initial environmental commitments.

At the December City Council meeting, the Columbus Department of Public Utilities disclosed that the massive $1 billion aggregation program building commitment announced in 2020 by utility AEP Energy, a subsidiary of Columbus-based utility AEP, was behind schedule due to inflation and supply chain problems.

None of the declared local wind and solar installations have been launched yet. The company revised down its target of 100% local green energy generation by 2022 to a target of 60% by 2034, the final year of the original agreement, along with higher prices in the renegotiated agreement.

City officials now anticipate that some on-site generators will soon come online for aggregation customers.

“We are delivering on our promise to provide local, Ohio-based energy to power our homes and small businesses,” Mayor Andrew Ginther said in September 2021, announcing an agreement in which the city would purchase power from the SWACO solar farm to power its houses. its own utility company, Columbus Division of Power, serving 16,000 customers. “This project will be a beacon in our community, signaling our unwavering commitment to a healthy and prosperous future for all residents.”

“We remain committed to developing the solar park on the SWACO property and using this clean energy to support the Columbus community,” Ginther spokeswoman Melanie Crabil said in an email Friday. “…We will continue to work with our partners to determine the future development of the facility and our goal of providing 100% clean energy from Ohio.”

While SWACO also remains committed to developing the closed landfill, it is not in discussions with any developers, Greer-Brown said. BQ handled the design and permitting and “shared with us that increased interest rates, equipment and labor prices have dramatically impacted the project as originally planned,” she said.

“Many factors beyond the control of the project partners influenced this project. Above all, rising costs have made the current financial model for the project unfeasible,” Greer-Brown said.

Greer-Brown added that SWACO did not spend any money on the project and collected a total of $40,000 in leasing fees from BQ between 2020 and 2023.

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