23): Anonymously funded group stokes local opposition to Ohio solar project

Canary Media: Anonymously funded group stokes local opposition to Ohio solar project
Kathiann M. Kowalski, 12/18/23

“An anonymously funded group is spreading misinformation about a rural Ohio solar project, according to project backers and others who reviewed claims made at a recent event,” Canary Media reports. “Knox Smart Development was incorporated last month by Jared Yost, a Mount Vernon resident and opponent of the planned 120 megawatt Frasier Solar project. Three weeks later, on Nov. 30, the group hosted a catered “town hall meeting” at a Mount Vernon theater that included speakers with ties to fossil fuel and climate denial groups. A company official with the solar developer, Open Road Renewables, was denied entry to the event, which was attended by approximately 500 people and featured complimentary food and drinks following the program. It’s unclear who funded Knox Smart Development so it could pay for the event.

“There are people with concerns who are helping us, and they’ve all asked to remain anonymous,” Yost told Canary Media when asked about its funding sources as people left the theater. “So we have local concerned citizens who are helping to fund this, including myself.”

A Dec. 7 filing advised developer Open Road Renewables and others that the Ohio Power Siting Board was ready to start review of the application for the Frasier Solar Project, which was filed in October. The project would be located in Clinton and Miller townships, both in Knox County. Yost and Knox Smart Development filed to participate in the case as parties on Dec. 8. An early version of Knox Smart Development’s website included the text, “Our mission: Empowering America,” with a hyperlink to a page for an organization called The Empowerment Alliance. Research by the Energy and Policy Institute, an energy and utility watchdog group, has linked the Empowerment Alliance to the natural gas industry.

Dave Anderson, the institute’s policy and communications director, found a National Review Ideas Summit program guide that characterized The Empowerment Alliance as a project of Karen Buchwald Wright and her husband, Tom Rastin. Wright is the board chair of Ariel Corporation, which makes compressors for the natural gas industry. Its headquarters is in Mount Vernon. The Empowerment Alliance’s highest paid contractor for the past four years, according to Internal Revenue Service filings, has been a group called Majority Strategies. Its chief strategist, Tom Whatman, emceed the Nov. 30 event for Knox Smart Development. Whatman is also the former executive director of the Ohio Republican Party.

Another speaker at the Nov. 30 event, Mitch Given, has appeared on behalf of The Empowerment Alliance to promote natural gas issues to county commissioners in Ashland, Madison and Logan counties. In Ashland County, Given said the alliance takes a hard line against renewables, and that Rastin, who has served as an executive vice president for Ariel Corporation and a director for its foundation, has been a major supporter. Whatman introduced Given at the program as someone who has been traveling around the state talking to farmers and others “that don’t know where to turn to find their voice to help them organize and how to push back” against solar projects.

Steve Goreham, a featured policy expert on the website for the Heartland Institute, also spoke at the Nov. 30 event. Heartland is well known for its attacks on mainstream climate science, and Goreham has often argued against the scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is real and driven primarily by emissions from burning fossil fuels…”