NextEra Energy’s 2,000-acre solar farm under construction in northwest Oklahoma is set to become one of the state’s largest renewable energy developments. Under Oklahoma law, its construction permit carried a $2.5 million fee.
But Christopher Banks, project manager for the Skeleton Creek Energy Center, believed the company deserved a major discount.
“Although we still have questions about the necessity of a building permit for solar arrays, we are agreeable to pay a fee in this case for the sake of expediency,” Banks wrote to the Oklahoma state fire marshal, who manages the fee, in a May 22, 2025, email, obtained by Investigate Midwest through an open records request. “Skeleton Creek hereby proposes a fee of $15,000.00.”
After back-and-forth negotiations, the state attorney general’s office got involved.
In an email to NextEra’s attorneys, Alex Pedraza, an assistant attorney general, argued that other states calculate permitting fees based on either a project’s valuation or its kilowatt capacity — approaches that would have resulted in higher fees for NextEra if applied in Oklahoma.
Pedraza recommended that NextEra accept the Fire Marshal’s revised proposal of half a million dollars.
“I believe you’ll find that both these methodologies as applied to your client’s solar farm projects would result in permitting fees totaling far greater values than OSFM’s self-implemented permitting fee cap,” wrote Pedraza in an Oct. 22, 2025, email.
The talks ended in November, when NextEra agreed to pay the reduced fee of $500,000.
As electricity demand surges, driven in large part by energy-hungry artificial intelligence infrastructure, rural Oklahoma has become a battleground over land use and power. The state’s wide-open spaces and low costs have attracted a wave of renewable-energy projects and data centers, and some lawmakers, including the governor, have actively courted energy companies to tap into those opportunities.
But many farmers and ranchers believe these renewable energy developments are disrupting their rural communities.
Opponents often cite concerns about falling property values, environmental and fire risks, loss of farmland and a lack of transparency. Underlying those fears is a deeper frustration — that powerful out-of-state and foreign companies are rapidly reshaping rural landscapes with little benefit for the people who live there.
Despite the pushback, NextEra Energy, a Florida-based company that is the world’s largest producer of wind and solar power, has continued its aggressive lobbying efforts, seeking to reduce its payments in state fees and suing local governments that attempt to block its projects, while also spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on campaign donations.
“It’s laughable that NextEra would request a reduction from $2.5m (as calculated by state statute) to $15k,” State Rep. Jim Shaw, a Chandler Republican who has been outspoken against the renewable energy sector, wrote in a statement to Investigate Midwest. “This speaks volumes to the disingenuous nature of ‘green energy’ companies who are looking to avoid and divest as much responsibility and obligation as possible.”
Keith Bryant, the Oklahoma state fire marshal — whose office is the only state agency that regulates renewable energy projects in Oklahoma — ultimately used discretion granted under the administrative rule to reduce NextEra’s fee to $500,000. (The rule allows fees to be “waived or reduced when, in the opinion of the State Fire Marshal, the reduction of fees is in the best interest of both parties.”)
Bryant said the standard square-footage formula produces unusually high fees for large solar projects because of their footprint, even though that footprint does not necessarily reflect the project’s overall scope. The $0.20-per-square-foot rate, he noted, applies to all new construction projects, not just renewable energy facilities.
“If I was to apply the 20 cents a square foot to these facilities that are into the thousands of acres, the permit fee would be exorbitant,” Bryant told Investigate Midwest.
The Skeleton Creek project is the third solar facility in Oklahoma to have its permit fee capped at $500,000.
The other two are TwelveMile III in Johnston County, in the southern part of the state, and Huckleberry Solar in Mayes County, outside Tulsa. Both projects are developed by Texas-based Leeward Renewable Energy. The Huckleberry project has a power purchase agreement with Google to support the company’s AI data centers.
The fire marshal could soon decide on similar fees, with NextEra Energy alone planning four additional solar farms and other developers lining up projects as well.
As more renewable energy projects come to Oklahoma, lawmakers have increasingly filed bills that could further regulate the industry.
Rep. Mike Dobrinski, a Republican whose district includes NextEra’s Skeleton Creek project site, introduced two bills last session — both still alive at the Capitol and expected to be considered again this session — that would directly affect projects like Skeleton Creek. One would establish setback requirements for solar and energy-storage facilities. The other would give the Oklahoma Corporation Commission regulatory authority over renewable-energy projects and require the agency to issue permits.
“The intent of that bill was never to be restrictive or punitive with cost or anything like that,” said Dobrinski of the latter bill, HB 2155. “Just to get a mechanism in place for our renewables that is similar to what oil and gas producers and developers have been doing for decades.”
Some Garfield County residents opposing the Skeleton Creek project say they contacted Dobrinski, but felt he was strongly supportive of renewable-energy development and dismissive of their concerns.
“It’s pretty clear to us who butters his bread,” said Lora Dierksen, an area resident who, along with 29 others, has sued to block the project.
Between 2020 and 2024, Dobrinski received $10,000 in campaign contributions from NextEra, according to public records. The company has also made contributions to Reps. Chad Caldwell and John Pfeiffer — two Republicans whose districts include parts of Garfield County — and it has donated $10,000 to Gov. Kevin Stitt. NextEra has also given $15,000 to Turnaround Team PAC, a political action committee with ties to Stitt.
In total, NextEra Energy has contributed more than $865,000 to Oklahoma political campaigns between 2015 and 2025, and its former lobbyist, Zachary Swartz, now serves as the USDA’s rural development director for the state.
The company employs about 16,000 people, reported roughly $24.7 billion in revenue and about $5.5 billion in net profit in 2025. It owns Florida Power & Light, the nation’s largest electric utility. In Oklahoma, it currently operates 18 wind farms and four energy storage facilities.
NextEra did not reply to several requests for comment.
Renewable energy pushback grows in rural Oklahoma
In their lawsuit, area residents argue NextEra’s Skeleton Creek project is partly on land zoned for agricultural use, not industrial development.
“I live in the country for a reason — to get away from industrial-looking things, for peace and quiet,” Dierksen said. “This brings nothing to Waoukomis, Oklahoma.”
After a Garfield County judge issued a summary judgment in favor of NextEra, the residents appealed, and the case is now before the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
According to NextEra, the Skeleton Creek project is expected to employ eight to 10 permanent workers and generate about $65 million in tax revenue for Garfield County over 30 years. The project has a power purchase agreement with the Western Farmers Electric Cooperative (WFEC), a generation and transmission cooperative that provides electric power to parts of Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas and Kansas
Critics say projects like Skeleton Creek are being built to feed the surge in artificial intelligence and data centers, not to meet local needs, since Oklahoma already generates nearly three times more power than it consumes.
Like many solar and wind farms, data centers have faced strong pushback from local residents in Oklahoma and across the country.
Data centers consume vast amounts of water — often comparable to an entire small or mid-sized town — and have driven up electricity costs in other parts of the country. They typically generate little long-term employment once construction is complete and often do not pay traditional property taxes, instead negotiating payments in lieu of taxes, known as PILOT agreements.
The pace at which these projects have appeared in rural Oklahoma in recent years has been striking, contributing to a growing sense of displacement and a loss of local control among residents.
According to Cleanview, a company that tracks large-scale data-center and renewable-energy developments, five data centers are currently operating in Oklahoma, though the number rises into the dozens when smaller facilities are included. An analysis by The Frontier found that at least 18 more data-center projects are in the pipeline.
Renewable-energy development has expanded even more rapidly. Oklahoma currently has 69 utility-scale wind farms, 15 utility-scale solar farms, and four utility-scale battery-storage facilities in operation. Another 44 wind projects, 78 solar projects, and 108 battery-storage facilities have either secured grid-interconnection agreements or are awaiting approval, according to interconnection.fyi, a website that tracks grid interconnection data.
As these projects have multiplied, disputes over where they can be built — and who gets to decide — have increasingly come to the fore. Zoning laws have been at the center of many of these clashes.
Last year, in the northeastern Oklahoma town of Oologah, the town board voted against rezoning land that would have allowed a Texas company to build an energy-storage facility. In another case, NextEra sued the Wagoner County Board of County Commissioners after the county denied a permit for a proposed 4,650-acre solar farm near Porter.
Unlike wind farms, solar and battery-storage projects in Oklahoma are not subject to statewide setback requirements. As a result, zoning rules have become one of the few tools available to local governments and residents seeking to influence where these projects are built.
For neighbors of the Skeleton Creek project, the consequences of large-scale development are already tangible.
The Hofferbers, ranchers who live next to the site, say that in addition to constant noise and disruption for over a year, they have seen wildlife move onto their land and attack their cattle after NextEra cleared nearby crop fields and wooded areas.
Lea Smith, who lives with her husband on a 480-acre cattle and grain farm about a mile from the project, worries about changes to drainage. She said NextEra removed terraces that had been built to control water flow across the land.
“If the drainage isn’t right, it washes out our crops,” Smith said. “Last year, more water came across and damaged our crops.”
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