Botetourt County, like many counties, is in the process of developing an ordinance governing solar projects.
My advice: Choose carefully.
Choose very carefully.
The planning commission meets Sept. 14 in a work session to go over details. This isn’t a public hearing, but it already seems clear where much of the Botetourt public is — at least the vocal parts of it.
Earlier this summer, when there were two requests to allow solar projects, the county burst into bloom with signs that proclaimed: “Keep Botetourt Green — No Industrial Solar.”
One project was withdrawn, the other turned down.
Anti-solar protesters may have thought they won a victory, but it may be only a temporary one. Solar panels may never cover those two properties, but those fields won’t stay green forever. Both are in parts of the county that are being developed. The question wasn’t solar vs. green fields but solar vs. future housing developments. In fact, a “for sale” sign went up recently for the largest of the two properties. That’s likely 50-plus acres of future housing.
That’s not really the issue here, though. It’s what rules the county adopts for solar — and then how it applies those to future solar requests.
Botetourt is not alone, merely the most convenient example for me to make this point: Rural counties that don’t want solar run the risk of triggering the heavy hand of Richmond coming down on them if they look too resistant to it.
I’m not here today to make the case for or against solar — there are plenty of people on both sides who can do that. I am here to lay out the political facts of life that my neighbors in Botetourt (as well as other rural counties across Virginia) need to understand as they grapple with solar development. I dealt with some of these in my previous column when Henry County moved to restrict solar development. Today I’ll just be a bit blunter.
Here’s the first thing to know: It doesn’t really matter what you think the state’s energy policy should be. That was decided when Virginia passed the Clean Economy Act in 2020. To the extent that you got a say — in General Assembly elections and elections for governor — those who disagree with the goals of that law got outvoted. Whether you like it or not, the Clean Economy Act is going to be the law of the land until at least 2030 (I’ll get into why that date matters later).
Here are the uncomfortable politics (well, uncomfortable to many rural areas) of the Clean Economy Act: It was passed by Democrats from the urban crescent, but the implementation must largely come in rural Virginia, which is represented almost entirely by Republicans who voted against the law. From a Democratic point of view, everyone must do their part in this energy transition. From a Republican point of view, particularly those who see solar as industrial blight on the rural landscape, the urban crescent legislators who voted for this don’t have to suffer the consequences of this legislation.
The Clean Economy Act mandated that the state’s two biggest utilities — Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power — go carbon-free by 2045 and 2050, respectively. There are some provisions to allow for natural gas in the name of “reliability,” which is why we’re seeing gas plants proposed in Chesterfield County and Cumberland County and a big expansion proposed in Fluvanna County.
Nonetheless, both utilities are required to develop or purchase carbon-free forms of energy. This is why we’re seeing a rush of energy development across the state. Mostly we’ve seen this in the form of solar facilities, which have been concentrated in Southside Virginia but now are spreading statewide. There are other energy projects that are still in the proposal stage — Dominion has proposed adding a small nuclear reactor to its existing North Anna nuclear station in Louisa County; Appalachian has proposed putting a small reactor (these are called “small modular reactors”) at its Joshua Falls substation in Campbell County. A private developer out of Charlottesville is building the state’s first on-shore wind farm on a mountain ridge in northern Botetourt County; a private developer out of Florida has proposed building two small pumped storage hydroelectric projects in Wise County.
The problem with solar and wind (but not hydro) is that they are part-time energy sources; those facilities can only produce power when the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing. That’s why we’re also seeing a big push for energy storage sites, basically big batteries that will store that power and release it onto the grid when it’s needed. Basically anything that can produce more electrons of power is in demand right now.
For our purposes here, I’m skipping past Dominion’s wind farm off the coast of Virginia Beach because that was planned long before the Clean Economy Act; however, this is an opportune time for our standard disclosure that Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions. You can see our policy here. You can also test this out yourself; you can become a donor yourself and have no say.
All this is by way of background to explain why Botetourt (feel free to substitute the name of your locality) is seeing more interest from solar developers. State law requires that Dominion and Appalachian get more renewable energy somehow — and that’s created a market for private development. Solar is popular because it’s relatively cheap, easy and quick to build. It’s on one end of the energy spectrum; nuclear is on the other end — expensive, hard and slow to build. Nuclear may be more reliable (a nuclear plant can run around the clock, solar can’t) and may produce far more gigawatts than solar, but if we start now, we could have a solar farm up and running maybe in a year, while it may take a decade or more with nuclear. The goal with those small reactors is that they’ll be cheaper and quicker to build, but since we don’t actually have any yet in commercial operation, we just don’t know. The promise of nuclear is speculative; solar is here now.
Anyway, for those who are against what they deride as “industrial solar,” what you think about this doesn’t really matter. This is the market reality in Virginia: Rural counties are going to see more solar proposals because the state law has intentionally created this demand — and there’s really nowhere else for it to go. This year the state did try to create some options for more developed areas: parking lot solar and plug-in home solar. Home solar may be fine for an individual residence, but it’s not producing utility-scale solar. Parking lot solar conceivably could, but solar developers haven’t shown much interest in it because building the canopies is more expensive than just sticking solar panels in a field somewhere — and eventually those expenses will get passed on to consumers, which defeats part of the purpose of solar, which is that it’s inexpensive. For better or worse, energy producers (be they utilities or private developers) are always going to look to rural areas for energy sites because that’s where the land is.
Here’s more reality: When some rural counties either got fed up with solar or decided they didn’t want it in the first place, they passed bans on solar development. Virginia legislators were so unhappy with those bans that this year they passed legislation to “ban the bans.” Localities must now consider every solar proposal. They don’t have to approve them; they don’t have to approve any of them — but Richmond is watching. And taking notes. State law now requires localities to explain to Richmond why they’re turning down solar projects. The state is essentially building a database of all the reasons localities are saying “no.” This can and will be used against rural localities that say “no” too many times.
Here’s where this comes home to Botetourt — or Bedford County next door, which is also famously anti-solar. It may not take much to push the General Assembly into a mood where legislators say, “You know what, we just can’t trust these counties to approve enough solar projects. We’re going to take away their local authority and do this ourselves.”
From the standpoint of pro-solar advocates, the state has decreed these renewable energy mandates but left the implementation up to individual localities, many of which just aren’t going along. If going carbon-free is an important goal to the state, and local governments are seen as standing in the way of saving the planet, the state will have to take over solar siting.
Remember: I’m not saying the state should; I’m just saying that’s what some would see as a logical way to make sure the Clean Economy Act goals are met.
Are those goals reasonable? Are they realistic? Are they wise? None of that matters, at least not to local governments. Those questions ought to matter to state legislators, and there is occasionally talk among Democrats that maybe the details of the Clean Economy Act need to be tweaked. Republicans, of course, would like to trash it altogether, but they are in the minority right now — and would need a trifecta (House, Senate, governor) to make radical overhauls. The earliest that can happen is 2030 — if Republicans were to a) win a majority in next year’s state Senate elections and then b) win a majority in the House and the governor’s race in 2029. Botetourt voters can’t do anything about that next year; they already have a Republican state senator (and House member). They need to hope that Republicans win in the more urban parts of the state, but that’s a matter for a lot more columns to come. For now, those who are putting up the “no industrial solar” signs need to understand that they are inviting the exact opposite of what they want. They want the county to block solar, but they could trigger the state coming in and saying what the county wants doesn’t really matter. We need more solar, so here it is. No need to thank us.
Notice that I haven’t mentioned the issue that has fired up many in Botetourt and elsewhere: Data centers. Yes, data centers are energy hogs that are driving up the demand for power. However, even if data centers didn’t exist, much of this solar development would be happening anyway because state law indirectly calls for it.
From a purely practical standpoint, rural boards of supervisors need to figure out how to deal with solar in a way that doesn’t get them thrown out of office in the next election but also doesn’t bring down the hammer from Richmond on them and rural counties across the state. Good luck with all that.
That’s why my advice to the Botetourt planners, and rural government elsewhere, is what I said at the beginning: Choose carefully. Choose very carefully. Or the day may come when you don’t get to choose at all.
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