A pair of Virginia lawmakers want to give state regulators more authority to sign off on proposed large solar, wind and battery storage projects if such projects face certain local hurdles.
Their legislation is coming before the General Assembly as developers of renewable energy projects — particularly large solar facilities — have encountered some local resistance and have worked through a variety of local regulations in recent years, all while Virginia faces deadlines for meeting state-mandated clean energy goals.
Senate Bill 567, from Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, and House Bill 636, from Del. Richard “Rip” Sullivan Jr., D-Fairfax County, would apply to solar energy facilities of at least 50 megawatts, wind energy facilities of at least 100 megawatts, and battery storage facilities of at least 50 megawatts.
The idea, Deeds said in an interview, is to think of utility-scale renewable energy from a statewide perspective rather than as a strictly local issue.
“This is the development of sufficient energy so that we have reliable, affordable, safe energy, and we’re reducing carbon at the same time,” Deeds said. “You know, it is in the interest of every single Virginian. It’s a Virginia issue. It’s a statewide issue, and that’s all this bill is about.”
Applicants planning such large renewable energy projects would be able to turn to the State Corporation Commission instead of a local government for approval of a project’s location if:
- a locality fails to approve or deny the application in a timely manner; or
- the applicant complies with certain state requirements but the locality denies it anyway; or
- the locality notifies an applicant that its project is locally compatible, but then amends its zoning laws in a way that adds additional, more restrictive requirements.
Renewable energy projects that receive the SCC’s OK in these cases wouldn’t need local land-use approval or other local permits.
Most of Virginia’s renewable energy projects thus far have been solar rather than wind.
Dominion is developing the 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, which starts 27 miles off the shore of Virginia Beach and is anticipated to be complete in 2026. Its two wind turbines currently operating are the first in federal waters, Dominion says.
[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
And plans remain underway for what could be the commonwealth’s first onshore wind energy facility, Rocky Forge, in Botetourt County. But at 75 megawatts, Rocky Forge would have been too small to be covered by Deeds’ and Sullivan’s legislation, had that legislation already been on the books before the project was developed.
Instead, it has primarily been utility-scale solar facilities — sometimes called “solar farms” — and their benefits and drawbacks that have brought residents to meetings of county boards of supervisors and town councils in recent years.
Proponents of solar facilities say they provide not only electricity but also income to landowners, who have the right to decide how to use their property. Opponents generally express concern about the facilities’ impact on property values, the environment, available farmland and scenic rural views.
Southside Virginia in particular has attracted a number of solar energy developers, due in part to the area’s availability of flat, relatively inexpensive land. But recently some localities have enacted, or have been considering enacting, limits on solar development.
For example, Mecklenburg County capped total solar development in the county at 2,325 acres, or less than 1% of the county’s land. Pittsylvania County capped utility-scale solar development at 2% of the total acreage within a single zoning district and said any new facility must be at least 5 miles from any others.
Supervisors in both counties cited local opposition when they passed the restrictions last summer, with one Mecklenburg supervisor, David Brankley, saying, “The overwhelming majority of the people I represent and throughout the county don’t want these projects in their county or in their backyard.”
Across at least 45 states in the U.S., more than 200 local restrictions have been enacted when it comes to siting solar, wind and other renewable energy projects, according to Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
Nonetheless, developing new sources of renewable energy is a stated goal of the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which was signed into law in 2020 and requires Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power, the state’s two largest electric utilities, to have carbon-free energy portfolios by 2045 and 2050, respectively.
The act sets a specific goal of the commonwealth having 16,100 megawatts of solar power, 5,200 megawatts of offshore wind and 2,700 megawatts of energy storage.
Deeds said he’s concerned about the state meeting the act’s goals in time.
“The reality is, we’re not even close to hitting our targets, and we’ve had all this demand created by data centers,” Deeds said.
Data centers are essentially physical facilities that house large numbers of computers and pieces of networking hardware. The largest concentration of data centers in the U.S. is in Loudoun County’s 30-square mile “Data Center Alley.” Among the 3,500 technology companies with operations in the county are Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
Dominion, which supplies Loudoun County with power, has said it has connected 75 data centers since 2019 and anticipates those facilities will ramp up their capacity in the next three to five years.
“We’ve never seen anything like this increase in demand for electric services,” Deeds said. “We’ve got to step up our game somehow or another.”
Dominion, which has more than 4,500 megawatts of solar projects that are operational, approved by the SCC or awaiting approval, opposes Deeds’ and Sullivan’s bills.
“We have a longstanding track record of working cooperatively with local governments on siting issues and don’t see the need to change that,” said Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby.
The Virginia Association of Counties, which represents counties in legislative and regulatory matters at the state and national levels, also opposes the bills.
It says local review of solar, wind and battery storage projects is needed to decide if a proposed project is consistent with a locality’s rules and goals on how land should be used. It argues the state should not “usurp local authority.”
Joe Lerch, VACo’s director of local government policy, said that across Virginia, when adding up utility-scale solar facilities of at least 5 megawatts, localities already have approved more than 10,000 megawatts of solar energy projects, most of which have also been approved by either the SCC or the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
“Localities are really stepping up to the plate in terms of working with developers in meeting the aspirations of the Virginia Clean Economy Act,” Lerch said.
Deeds disagreed with the notion that his bill would remove local government oversight but said the proposed legislation does recognize that developing energy projects is bigger than a local issue.
“I get it, local governments make land-use decisions, but you’ve got a real lack of uniformity in how solar projects have been dealt with,” he said.
He noted that the bill doesn’t apply to all renewable energy projects, just the larger, utility-scale ones.
“The local government is where the rubber hits the road. But these are big projects. They’re of statewide significance,” Deeds said. “You know, whether the industrial solar plant facility is built in one county or another, it doesn’t make any difference. It feeds the grid, which supplies the state.”