Battling medical debt and unpaid bills from their family farm, Wayne and Sara Greier thought they had a chance to start over when they signed a lease to lend their farmland to a $150 million solar project.
Solar company Alpin Sun’s proposal would have erased their financial hardship. Instead, it became the target of a conservative culture war that turned the Greiers into social pariahs and ended with a solar ban in their ruby red northwest Ohio community.
“We’re absolutely hated here. They surrounded our house with signs. Our kids got harassed at school,” Wayne Greier said of Green Township, a community that voted for Donald Trump by 45 points. “I got called a liberal. They kept asking: ‘When did you turn into a liberal? You’ve never been liberal. Why do you want green energy?’”