After five years of running into one obstacle after another, the developer of a proposed 2,400-acre solar farm east of Wenatchee has decided to walk away.
The Badger Mountain Solar project was mired in controversy from the start due to its location. However, it also faced broader challenges weighing down many wind and solar projects as Washington races to meet its clean-energy deadlines.
Avangrid, the Connecticut-based energy company behind the project, declined to say why it withdrew its application with the state in July. But permitting records show the project had faced tribal opposition, expired land leases, shifting federal policy and, finally, a yearslong wait for the transmission lines needed to move power across the Cascade Mountains.
Avangrid’s subsidiary, Aurora Solar, first applied in 2021 to build the 200-megawatt solar farm, with an optional battery system of the same size. At full output, it could have generated almost one-fifth of Seattle’s average electricity use.
It was immediately met with opposition.
Badger Mountain lies within Yakama Nation’s treaty territory and the traditional territories of the Wenatchi and Moses Columbia peoples, who are enrolled with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. Tribal members have described the mountain as a place used to gather foods and for ceremony. The Yakama Nation considers the mountain a traditional cultural property.
The Colville Tribes formally opposed the project in 2023, followed by the Yakama Nation. Concerns rose after a High Country News and ProPublica investigation found that a developer-funded cultural survey omitted more than a dozen sites of probable archaeological or cultural importance.
“While the Colville Tribes certainly appreciates the value of renewable energy such as solar power, sacred sites must remain pristine to pass down to future generations,” said Cindy Marchand, chairwoman of the Colville Tribes, after the withdrawal.
The state also found the project in conflict with Douglas County’s land-use and zoning rules and required a full environmental impact statement, the state’s most extensive environmental review. The project also drew opposition from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Sierra Club over potential harm to sensitive habitat and wildlife.
By 2024, Avangrid put the application on pause while it reconsidered comments from landowners and affected tribal nations. By the next year, it told the state that some of its leases had expired and would need to be renegotiated.
Then, the new federal administration and its hostility toward wind and solar power shook up the financial picture.
President Donald Trump and Congress accelerated the phaseout of federal wind and solar tax credits which had supported a large chunk of the upfront costs, while the administration repeatedly changed tariffs affecting equipment for renewable projects.
In 2025, Avangrid requested another pause saying federal regulatory uncertainty, tax changes, tariffs and supply-chain costs were complicating efforts to negotiate a long-term price with a buyer for the project’s power — the kind of agreement developers generally need to finance a project of this size.
The last problem to surface was transmission.
In a July 15 meeting with the state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, Avangrid asked for another one-year pause due to delays to Bonneville Power Administration upgrades intended to move more electricity across the Cascades.
Bonneville announced earlier this year that its target for completing that project had slipped from 2030 to 2032. Avangrid executive Mark Eilers said the project was “somewhat subject” to completion of that upgrade.
Five days after seeking the extension, Aurora Solar withdrew the application, offering no explanation.
The state’s Utilities and Transportation Commission Chair Brian Rybarik said in that July meeting the transmission delay could become a problem “for this state and for a lot of other projects,” not just Badger Mountain.
Under state law, Washington utilities must make their electricity greenhouse gas neutral by 2030 and supply their customers with completely carbon-free power by 2045.
