When we turned to coal as our main energy source, in the 1800s, nobody asked the people of Appalachia whether they wanted their land mined to power the country. That’s where the coal was, and, one way or another, mining companies bought the mineral rights to it and dug away.
Today, as coal gives way to renewable energy, the people of the localities where those solar and wind projects want to go are being asked whether they want them — and many of them are saying “no.”
In the past year, at least five localities have adopted caps on how much land can be devoted to solar development: Buckingham, Henry, Isle of Wight, Mecklenburg, Pittsylvania and Surry. At least 10 counties — Caroline, Charlotte, Clarke, Culpeper, Halifax, Lunenburg, Nottoway, Page, Shenandoah and Southampton — have taken other actions to discourage or otherwise restrict solar farms. And a longer list of other localities have rejected specific solar projects on a piecemeal basis. It’s possible that these lists are even longer, but the shrinkage of local journalism means many rural counties are in “news deserts” so the actions of their boards of supervisors go unreported. Whatever the precise numbers, the point is that a lot of counties in Virginia are trying to erect barriers to solar development.
This is akin to the Wise County Board of Supervisors back in 1890 voting to say, “Nah, we’re not going to allow that much mining, get your coal power someplace else.” Maybe today some in Wise County wish their forebears had done that — fewer problems from abandoned mines — but I can imagine that back in the day somebody somewhere would have said: “Hey! What are you doing? We need that coal to run the country! How do you expect us to power the foundries in Pittsburgh if you’re limiting how much coal you’ll dig?”
Some Virginia legislators are concerned about this growing trend to curtail solar farms. The Clean Economy Act that Virginia enacted in 2020 mandates that the state’s two biggest utilities, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power, produce 100% of their power from carbon-free sources by 2045 and 2050, respectively. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions. See our policy.) The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that as of 2022, Virginia produced 31% of its power through nuclear energy, just 11% from renewables, and the rest from various fossil fuel-powered sources. That means if Virginia is to meet its Clean Economy Act goals, we’re going to need to build a lot more renewable energy and, realistically, that’s going to be solar. Virginia has some offshore wind but no on-shore wind; the proposed Rocky Forge wind farm in Botetourt County that would be the state’s first on-shore commercial wind farm has been delayed and delayed.
We’re seeing Southside emerge as the “brightfields” of Virginia’s solar development as a counterpart to the coalfields of Southwest, but there’s also a lot of pushback in Southside and other rural parts of Virginia against solar. A nationwide study last year by Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change singled out Virginia’s Pittsylvania County and Franklin County for “exceptionally burdensome” rules. Pittsylvania bans new solar projects within 5 miles of an existing solar farm and imposes a cap of no more than 2% of the county’s acreage being devoted to solar. Franklin County has a countywide cap of 1,500 acres for all ground-mounted solar projects (as opposed to rooftop solar).
In response, we now see legislation introduced in the General Assembly that would give state regulators the power to approve large solar, wind or battery projects if local officials balk. (Cardinal’s Matt Busse recently wrote in more detail about these bills.) Supporters see this as a necessary move — energy generation is a statewide issue, and recalcitrant local governments shouldn’t be allowed to stand in the way. Star Trek’s Spock would have put it this way: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
The legislators who have introduced these bills have phrased it somewhat differently but mean the same thing: “After four years, we’re finding where the pinch points are,” Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax County, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “We’ve got state goals, and we need to think as a state about how we get there.”
State Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, put it this way to Cardinal: “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.”
Of course, some local governments, and solar opponents, see this quite differently: They see the potential for the state to mandate the solar projects they don’t want. (Or wind. A few counties have ordinances that restrict wind energy but so far on-shore wind has proven impossible to build even without restrictions, so that’s less of an issue).
Virginia is not alone in wrestling with the conflict between the goal to produce more renewable energy, and localities not wanting those energy projects. The Sabin Center study found that “at least 228 local laws, ordinances and policies have been enacted in 35 states to restrict renewable energy projects.” Now, some states are passing laws to override their local objections. Michigan passed a law in December to strip local governments of the power to block green energy projects. The Detroit News reports that California, Connecticut, Illinois, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island and South Dakota all have rules or laws of some kind that do something similar.
The politics of this create new friction between urban centers and rural areas.
Here’s the engineering reality: Metro areas consume most of our power but produce very little. Power generation is generally the responsibility of rural areas. That’s our unwritten social compact. No matter the energy source, nobody really wants an energy plant near them. Most energy plants have gone to rural areas simply because rural areas have plenty of land for them — and fewer people to complain.
Most energy plants were also built in a different era. Dominion’s Chesterfield Power Station is on the edge of a major metro area; that plant also dates to 1944 when Chesterfield was a lot more rural, environmental regulations were looser, and there wasn’t the kind of civic opposition you might see today. What’s happening now is we’re seeing a new generation of power plants being built — they’re solar farms and wind farms — and they’re going into new places. We should not be surprised that we’re seeing opposition. These places would no doubt oppose a coal-fired plant, too.
Now, here’s the uncomfortable political reality: The law mandating the transition to non-carbon energy passed on a nearly party-line vote, with Democrats from metro areas outvoting Republicans, who were mostly from rural areas. (There were a few Democratic opponents, too, such as Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, who agreed with the concept of green energy but objected to some of the bill’s details.)
The point I’m driving to: Few of those Democrats who essentially voted for more solar farms and wind farms have to worry about those facilities being located in their districts. The voters in the rural areas objecting to solar farms never asked for these facilities, but they’re being expected to shoulder the burden of transitioning to green energy. Or as one unhappy Republican former county supervisor in a rural area recently emailed me: “The Democrats know best. Cover up farmland in Southside so Loudoun County can have the big data center tax base.” He’s not wrong.
I personally like solar energy. I smile whenever I see solar panels. If we want energy independence, this seems one of the best ways to do it: The U.S. Energy Information Administration calculates that solar energy is the cheapest form of energy, period. We can produce energy almost for free simply by pulling it out of the sky without worrying about a single foreign dictator. I see every solar panel as another blow for freedom. If some solar developer wanted to lease my patch of land for a solar installation, I’d probably ask, “You’re going to pay me? Where do I sign?” However, I’ve lived almost my entire life in rural Virginia, so I’m also sensitive to the concern that solar farms are eating up farmland and turning what used to look like countryside into something that looks more industrial.
Whether that concern about taking farmland out of production is valid is another question. Dominion Energy says that if it builds out the approximately 16,000 megawatts of solar production required by the Clean Economy Act over the next 15 years, it would require about 160,000 acres — less than 1.5% of Virginia’s prime farm and forest land. However, like lots of things, there’s a difference between the calm rationality of math and the more hot-blooded emotions that people have about some things. Some people just don’t want a solar farm next door any more than they’d want a used car lot.
Here’s what I offer up to legislators from the urban crescent who think rural Virginia is standing in the way of meeting out Clean Economy Act goals — and saving the planet: I don’t really hear people objecting to the concept of solar energy. Oh, there might be a few climate deniers here or there, but they’re not the ones driving opposition to more widespread solar development. Instead, it’s people who are concerned about the character of the communities they love, and who feel something is being foisted on them that they never asked for.
This also comes in the context of a part of the state that feels left out, ignored, put upon. Oh, so now Northern Virginia wants to pay attention to us! Southside Virginia, in particular, has historical reasons to feel aggrieved. A generation or so ago, this was one of the most economically successful parts of the state — textile plants and furniture plants were humming, tobacco was still king. Now those economic drivers are gone or going, and much of Southside now counts among the most economically distressed parts of the state. Here, it’s being asked — no, it’s being told — that it has to accept what some consider the state’s garbage. Is it any wonder that some people might feel a wee bit upset? Why don’t you make all those data centers in Northern Virginia put solar panels on their roof? Why do you have to come down here and muck up my view?
When Appalachia had to dig into its mountains — and sometimes level them off — to produce coal, at least there were jobs that came with that environmental sacrifice. Solar energy is producing jobs — the U.S. Energy Department reports that 40% of the nation’s energy jobs are now in solar energy; this is a growth industry — but those jobs generally aren’t where the solar farms are. Once construction is done, the bulk of solar jobs are somewhere else. There are certainly benefits for rural areas in hosting solar farms — more tax revenues — but those benefits aren’t measured in a lot of jobs. There are also some other concerns about the influx of solar farms in rural areas — they can skew a county’s score in Virginia’s school funding formula, which is largely based on real estate values — so a county could potentially measure the growth of solar farms with a loss of school funding. That’s why some in Southside don’t see a lot of upside in solar farms. You’re ruining our landscape for nothing — we’re not getting many jobs out of this, and we might even have to give up school funding. The importance of converting our power grid to something that doesn’t bake the planet with carbon emissions seems a pretty distant virtue. We’re trading something we can see for something we can’t.
I’d ask those who will vote for this legislation to keep all these concerns in mind. Ultimately, we need more energy, and that energy has to be produced somewhere, and the reality is that’s going to be in rural areas somewhere. The proponents of these bills are also right in their Spock-like philosophy: We can’t let a few people stand in the way of electricity for all. But if we’re really a commonwealth, is there a way we can design a win-win scenario instead of one where some rural counties are forced to accept a form of development that they don’t want?