Bannock County, a rural county in southeastern Idaho anchored by the city of Pocatello, is moving toward a vote on a new ordinance that would authorize the development of solar, wind, and nuclear energy within its borders. The shift comes after the same county commission voted 2-to-1 in March 2024 to impose a blanket ban on utility-scale renewable energy installations. That ordinance could now be reversed before the end of fall 2026.
At the heart of this reversal is Todd Hough, now commission chairman, who cast the lone dissenting vote in 2024. Since then, he has worked to reopen the energy conversation — and the inclusion of nuclear power in the new draft is no coincidence. A significant portion of local residents and officials remain skeptical of renewables, citing concerns over their footprint on agricultural land and the fire risks associated with battery storage systems. For this group, nuclear energy — particularly small modular reactors — represents an acceptable alternative: a reactor the size of a truck, sitting on as little as 30 acres, compared to the tens of thousands of acres required by wind or solar farms. The argument resonates strongly among those reluctant to hand land over to large developers but still wanting locally generated power.
The broader national context matters here. By 2025, nearly a quarter of all U.S. counties had enacted some form of ban or moratorium on clean energy development, up from 15% in 2023. More than 60% of those counties are rural. Bannock County’s situation plays out against this backdrop as something of a test case: can a community that slammed the door on renewables reopen it — and bring nuclear along for the ride? The answer coming from Idaho could shape the conversation in dozens of similar counties across the country.
The path to the original ban began in the fall of 2023, when Hough himself championed a six-month moratorium after attending a conference hosted by the Idaho Association of Counties. Central to local concerns was the Lava Ridge Wind Project, a 1 GW facility slated to cover more than 57,000 acres of federal land in southern Idaho. The prevailing sentiment was that large developers were making decisions that directly affected local communities without any meaningful engagement. The project was ultimately canceled by the Trump administration in August 2025, but the underlying skepticism toward renewables has not faded.
If the new ordinance passes, Bannock County will become a concrete example of local-level openness to nuclear power — in a country where SMRs are still in development but drawing increasing interest precisely in rural areas. The willingness of an agricultural county in Idaho to seriously discuss nuclear installations says something telling about the state of the American energy debate: the demand for local, compact, developer-independent power is creating a political opening that next-generation reactors may occupy well before they ever come online at scale.
