In an interview with NPM, Circle Power Co-Founder and CEO Jordan Roberts discussed the firm’s effort to develop its 120 MW Groveland Mine Solar project on a Michigan brownfield and how that strategy might be key for navigating the local opposition that has killed some of its previous projects.

The firm is preparing to break ground on a 500-acre brownfield site for the Groveland project in Dickenson County, Michigan after securing permitting approval last year. The project is named after the former iron ore Groveland Mine site upon which the project will be sited.

The Groveland Mine site was shopped around by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, which took over the site following the abandonment of the mine in the ‘80s, as a potential site for a utility-scale solar project.

Ultimately, it was an offer that Roberts and Circle Power agreed to as an opportunity to potentially navigate the local pushback challenges that had killed a wind project that the firm had been seeking to develop in the area.

“We were running into fierce resistance on the permitting for that wind project,” Roberts said. “It has been a very difficult place to permit projects, so when the opportunity became available and we saw it was a brownfield, it piqued our interest. We looked at what we were learning from our experiences on the ground and thought, if not here, where?”

However, despite the more agreeable site, Roberts says the team still experienced “firm pushback” against the project from locals during the permitting process, which required approvals from three separate townships due to the site’s unique location. In the end, though, he says the use of the site, which has been sitting abandoned for decades, made too much sense to kill.

“I don’t expect to ever develop a renewable project that doesn’t have strong pushback,” Roberts said. “It is just too politicized of a topic. But, while we were not able to avoid opposition, we were able to build a very strong coalition of support due to the logic of using the site.”

Groveland Mine will be Circle Power’s first experience developing a project on a brownfield, though Roberts notes that he and other members of his team have experience working in other challenging environments prior to Circle Power’s founding in 2017 that he thinks may be useful in the development of Groveland Mine.

Among the project’s challenges, Roberts names the unique footprint of the project, necessitated by the layout of the brownfield site. He also notes that, despite the added challenge of working around the site, he and his team must also be cognizant of keeping costs down to ensure competitiveness with other projects in the area.

“There’s no incentive in the Michigan market to buy power from a brownfield, so you’ve still got to make sure you’re going to be able to compete,” Roberts said.

Notably, although permitting for the project is already approved, it is not slated to reach COD until 2028. However, Roberts flatly denies that this timeline is impacted by the project’s brownfield site despite the layout and potential safety hurdles.

“Our timeline is driven purely by [MISO] interconnection like everybody else,” Roberts said.

Despite the challenges of developing a utility-scale project of Groveland Mine’s scale on a brownfield, Roberts says Circle Power is interested in replicating the project and is already incorporating other brownfield developments in its pipeline. In particular, he says the value of being able to move projects through without the same level of pushback from locals is essential and notes Circle Power is actively changing its strategy to project siting to take this into consideration.

“It’s really served as a launch pad where we really seek projects that we think will be a good fit for the community and try to permit around those,” Roberts said.

While he admits that large developers may run out of viable brownfield sites to meet their capacity goals, he notes the strategy is more viable for a smaller more focused shop like Circle Power to tackle.

“It’s not easy, but I’d say we specialize in difficult projects,” Roberts said. “The more mainline, typical developments maybe can be better handled by other people.”

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM US subscribers.

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