A debate simmering for years about the construction of utility-scale solar facilities on farms and forestland in Virginia has reached a boil in the new legislative session with decarbonization targets looming over the state and a proposed new facility review board threatening to infringe upon local decision-making. 

The state’s Commission on Electric Utility Regulation (CEUR), recently reinvigorated to consider bills outside of Virginia’s 45- or 60-day legislative sessions, voted earlier this month to endorse proposed legislation to create the Virginia Energy Facility Review Board that would weigh in on proposed solar projects. 

A new version of the bill, crafted in recent weeks in response to local opposition, would leave final decisions on solar and battery storage facilities in the hands of localities but require them to include targets for achieving statewide clean energy goals. 

The revised bill drops a model ordinance the review board would have drawn up for all new projects, as well as review board authority to issue opinions on the advisability of new projects, unless a developer asks for one.

“The CEUR-endorsed policy seeks to balance the needs of many competing interests, from the state and localities, developers and conservation groups,” said Carrie Hearne, executive director of CEUR, in an email to Inside Climate News. “It would bring more information into the record for localities to consider during initial permit reviews, and create a framework around local planning and policies.”

The updated bill “continues that mission,” Hearne told legislators Friday afternoon.

The solar siting legislation comes as the state labors to comply with the Virginia Clean Economy Act, or VCEA, a 2020 law seeking to decarbonize the grid by mid-century. Under the bill, the state’s two largest utilities are required to build substantial amounts of solar—Dominion Energy 16,100 megawatts and Appalachian Power Company 600 megawatts—as well as battery storage facilities.

Given a recent uptick in local government denials of solar project proposals, developers and environmental groups say they are concerned those targets will be missed. But the creation of a new Energy Facility Review Board to weigh in on siting has led to concerns among Virginia’s counties over the loss of character of agricultural and forested lands.

“If we’re serious about our energy targets, then we need to find a solution for it,” said Jim Purekal, director with Advanced Energy United, a trade association advocating for zero-carbon technologies that supports the bill, despite a weakened appeals process. “There’s simply no way to decarbonize Virginia’s grid without a diverse set of large-scale projects.”

Joe Lerch, director of local government policy with the Virginia Association of Counties, said the initial proposal was “starting down this path of preempting local decision-making authority.” The update is “in a much better place.” 

“We’re supportive of all non-greenhouse gas emissions sources of meeting that (electricity) demand, whether it’s solar, it’s small modular reactors, it could also be geothermal,” Lerch said in an interview. “But we think it needs to be more of a comprehensive look at the whole energy picture, and not just favoring one industry over others when it comes to the local decision-making process.”

Democrats have control of both legislative chambers by narrow margins and have largely been supportive of solar energy. House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, a member of the CEUR, voted to advance the original bill while saying, “I would do everything in my power to kill this bill if it comes before the body like this.” He believes the new siting board, as envisioned in that legislation, would have been too much of a top-down approach. He declined to comment Tuesday morning on the update.

The bill also faces tough sledding with Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who signaled opposition and called the VCEA a “quagmire” in his annual State of the Commonwealth address.

“Local communities must be able to exercise their rights with regards to land use,” Youngkin said.

The Struggle

The siting of solar facilities has emerged as a contentious issue, given an initial trend for unanimous approvals followed by a course reversal with rejections at the county level. 

Prior to the passage of the VCEA, localities approved 100 percent of solar projects in 2016. By 2024, the approval rate had fallen to under 50 percent, according to information from the Virginia Solar Initiative at the University of Virginia Weldon Cooper Center. 

At the same time, denials have gone from under 10 percent to about 40 percent.

In 2016, localities approved just under 500 megawatts of solar. In 2022, localities approved 3,000 megawatts. Last year, that number fell to about 1,000 megawatts.

Solar developers acknowledge early builders may not have engaged in community outreach to explain the impacts of newer forms of development on their communities. But there’s also been misinformation—like erroneous reports that solar farms have drained acid rain onto fields— that have skewed perceptions of projects.

“I think (localities) see solar as a threat to their way of life,” said Purekal.

For Lerch, the increase in denials could be due to bad actors among solar developers having stormwater runoff and erosion issues. In May, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality fined the solar developer Energix, which declined to comment for this article, $158,000 after years of violations over those problems.

Issues with financing, or the backlog of projects waiting approval from PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator for Virginia, Lerch said, could also hold up actual construction after localities have approved over 13,000 megawatts of projects.

“The bottleneck is not my locality,” said Daniel Witt, county administrator in Charlotte County, located in a Southside region called “the wood basket” because of its forests harvested for the timber industry. There, Witt said his county approved over 1,507 megawatts of solar with the amount of time for construction to begin ranging from 299 days to 1,958 days.

Land Use Loss

The boiling solar siting debate in Virginia is fueled by the current rule of thumb that one megawatt of solar takes up about 7.5 acres of land.

According to a 2021 Virginia Commonwealth University report, solar had been built on 13,842 acres with about 90 percent going on forested, crop and pasture land.

Those numbers come as Virginia has lost 500,000 acres of agricultural land between 2017 to 2022 due to thin profit margins and lack of interest from young farmers. The agricultural and forestry communities represent Virginia’s top economic sectors, with a 2021 state report finding the former contributing $82.3 billion to the state’s economy annually.

There are decommissioning plans for solar projects requiring a site to be returned to its natural state after its 30-year life cycle, and agrivoltaics pairing solar with agricultural practices, but those aren’t proven yet to the agricultural community.

“This is a larger concern that we are foregoing everyone’s ability to produce agricultural goods forever in these spaces,” said Williamson. “I look back at the passing of President Carter, which I think has put a lot of this conversation in perspective. We should have been talking about this since 1972 when he put panels on the top of the White House.”

However, an updated report from VCU and Advanced Energy United found that less than one percent of all of those land types in the state have been taken up by utility-scale solar.

Going forward, if solar were to meet 15 percent of the state’s energy demand, more than the current 6 percent solar currently provides, the updated VCU report estimates utility-scale projects could need 3.1 percent of all cropland and .5 percent of each forestland and cropland by 2035.

“Even at an aggressive (rate) … we’re only talking about less than six-tenths of a percent,” said Purekal.