A commission focused on electricity regulation in Virginia is considering the idea of a new state-level board to advise local governments on large solar project proposals, as well as potentially creating a process to override local rejections of such proposals.
Under the draft plan, the Virginia Solar Energy and Energy Storage Siting Advisory Board would offer its technical opinion to any local government evaluating a solar project that is large enough to be considered of statewide significance, a determination that would be based on parameters including being larger than 20 megawatts.
If a local government ultimately rejects a solar proposal, the developer could appeal to the State Corporation Commission or perhaps a circuit court. And if Virginia falls behind on meeting its goals for adding new renewable energy, the state could eventually turn the board’s opinions into binding approvals.
Those plans, which the staff of the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation proposed at a commission meeting on Tuesday, come as various stakeholders juggle meeting carbon-free energy goals mandated by the Virginia Clean Economy Act, rapidly rising electricity demand and a state-versus-local tension over who should have the authority to approve or reject large solar projects.
“We have a situation in which we have a statewide mandate, a statewide goal, that is being implemented or not implemented at the local level,” said Del. Rip Sullivan Jr., D-Fairfax County, who sits on the commission. “That’s an interesting intersection, and we need to navigate that.”
The proposed new solar siting board would have members from the state Department of Environmental Quality and the SCC, as well as local and regional officials based on where a solar project is proposed, said Carrie Hearne, the executive director of the CEUR, who presented the recommendations to the commission on Tuesday.
CEUR staff also recommended establishing a statewide framework of local solar ordinances and requiring each local government to adopt an ordinance within that range of options. Hearne said that would prevent local governments from making “unreasonable decisions” such as banning solar projects entirely.
“It establishes consistency throughout every jurisdiction across the commonwealth but still gives local governments choice within how they frame their ordinance,” she said.
Staff of the CEUR also proposed that the Virginia General Assembly allocate $4 million to planning district commissions around the commonwealth to create regional energy plans that spell out how they will work toward meeting Virginia’s clean-energy goals.
The ideas presented Tuesday came after CEUR staff sought input from the solar industry, environmental advocates, local governments and others, Hearne said.
Besides requiring state legislation to make the proposals a reality, a number of details have yet to be worked out, including the process for a developer’s appeal and how the state would decide if it needed to take over the approval process for a large solar proposal.
The general consensus at Tuesday’s meeting was that much further discussion is warranted.
State-versus-local clash in spotlight
When a local government rejects a proposed solar project, officials commonly cite reasons that include concerns over its impacts on property values, rural aesthetics, health and the environment. Some localities have capped how much land can be used for solar or have banned new projects.
Sullivan sponsored legislation during the last General Assembly session that would have allowed solar developers to appeal project rejections to the state under certain circumstances; his bill was carried over to the upcoming legislative session.
He said Tuesday that the advisory board concept represents a compromise that would help Virginia meet its clean-energy mandate while working with localities on some of the problems that they see.
“This sets out a timeline that would allow the commonwealth and its localities to work together with local ordinances, better information, collaborative planning, to sort of ramp up, if you will, to a better place than we are now. I believe we’re in an untenable place now with some localities just shutting off to solar or effectively doing so by denying good projects,” Sullivan said.
The Virginia Clean Economy Act, passed in 2020, requires the commonwealth’s two largest electric utilities, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power, to achieve carbon-free energy portfolios by 2045 and 2050, respectively. It included benchmarks for how much solar power should be part of that endeavor.
[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County, said Tuesday that in order to comply with the VCEA, “we’ve got to start building more carbon-free electrical generating facilities.”
“We’re never going to meet our goals if localities keep approving things like data centers but won’t approve anything that generates the electricity to power them, unless we just want to start buying the power from other places in America,” he said.
Virginia’s rising electricity demand is driven largely by the proliferation of Northern Virginia data centers, the arrays of networked computers that power numerous services ranging from artificial intelligence to email to video streaming.
Meanwhile, Southside Virginia has been a popular destination for solar developers who are drawn to the region’s relatively flat and inexpensive land. A recently launched Virginia Solar Database from the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service shows that nearly half of the 13,000 megawatts of solar locally approved in the past decade has been in Southside Virginia.
Several speakers at Tuesday’s meeting said that they see the CEUR proposal as potentially undermining the power of local governments.
Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, said that he would prefer to see localities motivated by “incentives instead of threats,” and that allowing a rejected solar developer to appeal to the SCC would be “just another way of taking away another measure of local authority.”
“It’s not the answer to simply kick the can down the road, but when we get to some of the specifics here, the burden of complying with the Virginia Clean [Economy] Act unquestionably is falling on rural Virginia, and we are deeply concerned about that,” Obenshain said.
Jay Ford, Virginia policy manager for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, told the commission on Tuesday that he is concerned about the advisory board preempting local authority, particularly if a developer could appeal to the SCC rather than a local court.
“I think more generally our concern is that we don’t land on a vehicle that is just slow preemption or preemption by committee,” Ford said.
Dean Lynch, executive director of the Virginia Association of Counties, wrote a letter that was included as part of a CEUR committee’s Nov. 7 meeting. The organization represents counties in legislative and regulatory matters at the state and national levels.
“VACo supports maintaining local authority over decisions regarding utility-scale installations of solar power, wind power, and energy storage facilities, addressing the impacts and choices involved in these developments,” Lynch wrote.
After solar surge, localities revisiting plans
Data from UVa and the state DEQ illustrate how some local governments are pushing back against new solar projects.
The share of proposals in Virginia receiving local approval has decreased from more than 80% in 2017 to just under 50% this year, while the share of projects denied reached a peak of about 40% this year, according to UVa’s solar database. Some projects were also withdrawn by developers.
Last year, the DEQ issued 44 permits, representing 960 megawatts of solar power. So far this year, the DEQ has issued 17 permits, representing 573 megawatts, according to Aaron Berryhill, solar program manager for the Virginia Department of Energy.
“This is said to be the first year that the state will have approved less solar projects and less megawatts than the year before,” Berryhill said Nov. 18 at a Richmond conference that brought together lawmakers, business leaders and other stakeholders to discuss the Virginia Clean Economy Act.
Berryhill told the audience that day that about 50 of Virginia’s more than 130 localities have gone through the full process of approving a solar project and seeing it go into operation, while nearly 75 counties and cities have at least approved a solar project, he said.
Most of Virginia’s city and county governments have solar-specific rules in their local regulations. Many are now revising or updating those rules, and some are taking a stronger stance when it comes to large-scale solar, he said.
“This includes some local governments that have quite a bit of experience. They have sited and approved several projects and are now kind of rethinking their approach,” Berryhill said.