Jeff Hough did not pull any punches. Standing before a packed courthouse filled with local residents, the Republican county commissioner warned that what his fellow commissioners were about to do would violate America’s founding ideals. To make his case, he quoted directly from the Declaration of Independence.
The three-person Bannock County Commission was preparing to vote on a controversial ordinance that would impose a complete ban on utility-scale solar and wind development across the county.
"We cannot deny the entire county the opportunity to exercise their property rights," Hough told the assembly. "That goes against the principles this country was founded on."
Just minutes after his emphatic speech, the ordinance passed by a 2–1 vote, with Hough standing alone as the lone dissenter.
Since that consequential vote in March 2024, Hough has ascended to the role of chair of the county commission and has dedicated himself to overturning the ban. He will soon have a concrete opportunity to make that happen. This fall, Hough and the other two commissioners are set to vote on a newly drafted ordinance with language that would formally allow the development of solar, wind, and nuclear energy within the county.
The impending vote in Bannock County serves as a compelling test case for whether—and how—a rural community can revisit its assumptions regarding the costs and benefits of clean energy, ultimately deciding to welcome development it once aggressively swore off.
A National Trend of Clean Energy Restrictions
The debate in Idaho mirrors a broader national friction point. By 2025, nearly one in four counties across the United States had implemented some form of ban, moratorium, or restrictive impediment to clean energy development, representing an increase from 15 percent of counties in 2023. According to an analysis of data from USA Today and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University conducted by The Daily Yonder and Canary Media, more than 60 percent of the counties that have enacted these bans are classified as rural, using criteria from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
Bucking this national trend and reversing the existing ban would put Bannock County back in play at a critical juncture when the state of Idaho faces severe energy constraints. Idaho Power, the state’s largest electric utility, projects that electricity demand will surge by one gigawatt by 2030, marking a roughly 26 percent leap from current baseline levels.
"The need to build stuff now is critical to Idaho’s economic future," said Aaron Menenberg, the Idaho policy manager for Renewable Northwest, a nonprofit organization working to decarbonize the regional power grid. "We can’t afford to say no to anything."
Nestled in a picturesque valley a few hours north of Salt Lake City and roughly 100 miles west of Wyoming’s Teton Range, Bannock County is geographically positioned as a prime location for new power plants. It hosts the Populus substation, a critical logistical juncture for routing electricity onto the transmission grid and into Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and the Pacific Northwest. Constructing new power generation facilities in close proximity to an established substation is significantly cheaper, and those logistical savings can help bring down overall electricity costs for utility customers.
Economic Realities and Agricultural Pressures
For Hough, however, the most compelling argument for the county residents extends beyond utility-bill savings into the realm of local economic development. In recent years, Bannock County’s population has grown at a much slower pace than the state of Idaho as a whole. Meanwhile, the county’s rural communities are watching essential local services slowly disappear, while drought conditions worsened by climate change make it increasingly difficult for family-operated farms to stay afloat.
Hough firmly believes that renewable energy installations would infuse vital capital into the community. Neighboring counties offer local proof of this financial impact: in 2024, clean energy projects in nearby Power and Bingham counties generated $909,000 and $639,000, respectively, in direct tax revenue. Hough wants to send a definitive message to the renewables industry and prospective investors that Bannock County is open for business.
"Rural America is in a transition state," Hough said from his office in the county seat of Pocatello. "How do we make or help rural America transition to this new way of life, so that they can thrive and prosper?"
Not everyone shares Hough’s vision of prosperity. In south Bannock County, his campaign has encountered fierce, organized opposition. The local populace is effectively divided into two camps. On one side are residents who are willing to lease their own private land to solar energy developers or defend their neighbors’ rights to do so. On the other side are residents who remain deeply skeptical of renewables, viewing land leases as a form of selling out—though many within this skeptical faction paradoxically support nuclear energy development.
Steve Criddle, a third-generation farmer and lifelong resident of south Bannock County, voiced early support for solar before the ban was enacted. Describing the community climate surrounding the issue today, he put it simply: "It’s confrontational."
The Roots of the Ban
The moratorium on solar and wind that ultimately led to Bannock County’s ban stemmed from an unlikely source: Hough himself.
In the fall of 2023, Hough attended a conference hosted by the Idaho Association of Counties in Boise. At the event, the conversation was heavily dominated by discussions surrounding the Lava Ridge Wind Project, a massive one-gigawatt development slated for more than 57,000 acres of federal land in southern Idaho. County leaders from across the state expressed widespread concern that clean energy developers were moving too aggressively and running roughshod over local communities. (The project’s trajectory shifted later when the Interior Department canceled Lava Ridge in August 2025.)
The discussions sparked concern for Hough. Months prior to the conference, he had learned that several private developers, including Chicago-based Hecate Energy and Moab, Utah-based Balanced Rock Power, were actively approaching local landowners regarding potential solar projects in Bannock County.
When Hough returned from Boise with the cautionary narrative of Lava Ridge fresh in his mind, he decided to take preventative action.
"I realized that we didn’t have any kind of ordinance," Hough recalled. "So I knew they’d come in and do whatever they wanted."
On October 12, 2023, spearheaded by Hough, the county commissioners voted unanimously to enact a six-month moratorium on large-scale energy generation projects. The stated intention was not to permanently ban solar and wind, but rather to buy the county sufficient time to draft sensible regulations, ensuring that future developments properly balanced economic opportunity with responsible land stewardship. A public hearing was scheduled for the following February, with a formal commissioner vote set for March.
Community Mobilization and Opposition
However, the moratorium quickly took on a life of its own. In the ensuing months, a dedicated group of concerned residents organized to push for a permanent prohibition.
Rebecca Falcon led the charge. A decades-long resident of Downey, a small town in south Bannock County, Falcon had been approached by Balanced Rock in September 2023 regarding a lease for a portion of her 80 acres. Appalled by the proposal, she promptly turned the company away. However, Balanced Rock’s proposed Harmon Solar Project—a 300-megawatt solar facility paired with a 1,200-megawatt-hour on-site battery energy storage system—encompassed land owned by her neighbors. Halting the project would require a collective community effort.
Falcon and another neighbor, Dez Hauser, encouraged concerned community members to turn out in force for the February 2024 public hearing regarding the future of the moratorium. The level of public interest was so intense that the venue had to be moved from the county courthouse to a packed local high school auditorium in south Bannock County. More than two dozen speakers testified, the vast majority in staunch opposition to solar development.
When the commissioners convened the following month, Hough voted to repeal the moratorium, but the other two commissioners voted to extend it, framing it as an extended pause to study potential impacts. As controversy mounted through the spring and summer of 2024, the county ultimately took no further action. The ban remained firmly in place. Falcon, Hauser, and other opponents had secured a victory.
The Impact on Local Landowners
For farmers like Dale Lish, a grain farmer based in Downey and a retired U.S. Department of Agriculture worker familiar with rural energy programs, the decision was deeply frustrating.
"The approach was just no to everything, which bothered me," Lish said. "A straight-out ban—I don’t think that’s American. I think we, as private-property owners, ought to have a chance to do what we want within reason."
In 2023, Lish signed a one-year contract with Hecate to option approximately 400 acres of his land for solar development. Because of the county’s subsequent ordinance, Hecate declined to renew the contract in 2024 and ultimately pulled out of the county entirely.
Over the past two and a half years, Hough has continued advocating for private-property rights while attempting to educate the community on Idaho’s mounting power needs. While the commission will not vote on the new draft ordinance until later this fall, at least one of Hough’s colleagues appears to have shifted his stance. Ernie Moser, an incumbent commissioner who supported the ban in 2024, noted that his fears regarding solar and wind are no longer as acute as they were two years ago, though he emphasized the importance of crafting the policy carefully. The remaining commissioner, Ken Bullock, declined to comment.
May primary election results further underscored the county’s divided opinions. Hough faced an anti-solar challenger in the Republican primary and won overall by 14 percentage points, yet his opponent captured 70 percent of the vote specifically within Downey. With no Democratic challenger, Hough secured his seat for the general election. These figures mirror the 2024 primary results, when former commissioner John Crowder, who voted for the initial ban, won heavily in Downey before losing his seat to a Hough ally.
Climate Pressures and Agricultural Decline
The debate unfolds against a backdrop of severe environmental and economic stress for local families. Steve Criddle’s family roots in Downey extend back to 1876. His grandfather and father both farmed grain, a tradition Criddle maintained until climate pressures rendered grain farming unsustainable.
"We don’t get enough moisture anymore," Criddle said, noting that un-irrigated fields produce a fraction of their historical yields. Facing extreme drought conditions after a winter marked by record-low snowfall, Criddle has transitioned some land to cattle grazing and worked odd jobs to save the family farm.
As small-scale farming has declined, Downey has lost its rural hospital, bank, pharmacy, movie theater, grocery store, and farm-equipment shop. For Criddle and his wife, Keedrin, solar leasing represented a stable source of income to reinvest in the farm and ease the physical burdens for future generations.
Lytton Bastian, another multigenerational Downey farmer with over 2,000 acres, signed a lease contract with Balanced Rock in 2021 for 840 acres of his least productive ground—land currently used as a gravel pit and seasonal cattle pasture. Bastian argued that no prudent farmer would sacrifice prime irrigated ground, but saw the lease on marginal land as a practical tool for generational continuity.
As the debate reaches another critical juncture, the future of clean energy development in Bannock County rests squarely in the hands of its commissioners, balancing the imperatives of regional energy demands, local economic revitalization, and the deeply held convictions of rural landowners.