This is the Guardian.

Today, the row over the biggest solar farm in the US.

And what it tells us about the climate crisis.

The

Oliver Millman is an environment reporter for the Guardian in the US.

And that means he's always searching out the innovations that will help the country meet its climate goals.

I became aware that what was turning out to be the largest solar project in US history was unfolding

in this unremarkable flat corn farmland of Northern Indiana.

It was called the mammoth solar project, named after the fact that nearby a large masterdom was found, preserved in peat.

This mammoth solar project will cost $1.5 billion.

The people developing it claim it will eventually generate enough power for almost a quarter of a million homes.

And local farmers will make money from it by loaning their land on which a vast expanse of gleaming black solar panels will be built, tilted towards the sun.

It's enormous. The plant size is around 13,000 acres, which is about the size of Manhattan.

But Indiana isn't Manhattan.

It's a republican heartland. And the prospect of giving over thousands of acres of farmland to generating green energy is a nathema to some of the people who live there.

As Oliver travelled around the area, he found out just how far the dissenters are willing to go to try and prevent this development from happening.

I'd heard that there was this one wealthy woman who was going round trying to do anything she could to try and stop this project.

And I'd heard that there was this office that she'd bought next to the solar developer that she'd done just to put an opposes in the window to troll them.

And that really did make me interested in thought. It wasn't just another case of nimbyism. This was something quite different.

President Joe Biden arrives at COP27 today. He'll pledge that the US, one of the most polluting nations in the world, will reach net zero by 2050.

And to back up that claim, he'll need evidence that projects like mammoth solar are going ahead in earnest.

The reality is more complicated than that.

...