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For many rural counties across Southside Virginia, their unlikely heroine in this year’s General Assembly session is a Democrat from Northern Virginia.
Before I explain how state Sen. Russet Perry, D-Loudoun County, came to cast the unexpected vote that killed what many rural localities feared would lead to the state overriding their local zoning decisions on solar projects, let’s sketch out the circumstances that made this so dramatic.
Just before this year’s General Assembly session gaveled open, the legislature’s investigative agency released a report that can only be described as eye-opening: It said that if data centers continue to grow unconstrained in Virginia, the state’s demand for electricity will triple by 2040.
This came on top of a previous report, the creation of the Virginia Solar Database by the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, that, among other things, documented how local governments are increasingly rejecting solar projects that come before them.
Those two reports seemed to give new urgency to the concern among many Democrats that the state will have trouble fulfilling the Clean Economy Act, which mandates a carbon-free power grid in the state by 2050.
There had been talk of legislation that would, in some circumstances, allow the state to overrule local governments on solar projects. That was eventually watered down to the bill by state Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, that came before the Senate on Feb. 3. That version of SB 1190 would instead advise localities. Republicans, especially those representing the rural districts that are seeing the most solar proposals, warned that this was the proverbial “slippery slope” and “camel’s nose under the tent” that would someday inevitably morph into actual state mandates. Democratic proponents said it would do no such thing and instead, for the first time, put some onus on Northern Virginia — home to the vast majority of the state’s energy-gulping data centers — to take some action toward producing energy.
For the details of that debate, see the coverage by Cardinal’s Matt Busse.
What matters for our purposes today is this: When the time came for senators to vote, the expectation was that the bill would pass on a 21-19 party-line vote. It didn’t. It failed on a 20-19 vote, with Perry casting the decisive “no” vote. Another Democratic senator, Lashresce Aird of Petersburg, was absent but later said she’d have voted no, as well. Still, no one was expecting the senator from Data Center Alley to be the one to object to the bill that, however you interpret it, would have led to more solar power for data centers (and anyone else plugged into the grid).
Why did Perry vote no and Aird intend to vote no? I never heard from Aird, but here’s what Perry told me in a phone interview: She represents a lot of rural residents, and she worries that they’d get paved over with solar projects they may not want.
“My district has a decent section of rural land, not just in western Loudoun, but I also have Fauquier, as well,” she said. “That’s a decent chunk of open rural land, and my constituents care about that very much. They care about their localities not losing their authority.” (Of note: Aird’s district includes an unusually large amount of rural voters for a Democratic district, too — about 39% of Aird’s voters are in rural counties.)
Perry pointed out that the legislation called on planning districts to set targets for energy production. The bill’s proponents cited that as evidence that there were no local mandates — that localities themselves would be setting regional targets through their planning districts. Perry sees that just the opposite. Loudoun is in Planning District 8 along with other Northern Virginia localities — localities that have little to no rural land left.
“I kept asking, ‘Where is solar going to go?’ and Loudoun seemed the only place,” she said. “It honestly wasn’t that hard of a vote for me. My local towns were opposed to it [the bill], so I feel I was representing my constituents.”
So how can Virginia meet its clean energy targets without mandating that reluctant rural localities accept solar projects whether they want them or not? “We can work through how we do that, but we have to have the buy-in of the localities where we’re trying to put it,” Perry said. She said this can’t just be Democratic-voting areas telling Republican-voting rural areas they have to take solar, or else. “I know Fairfax, it’s more expensive there, but if it’s a priority, you have to put your money where your mouth is.”
She’s hoping that battery storage and other technical innovations will lessen the demand on rural acreage for solar. “I don’t think there’s an easy, simple solution to the question,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s just putting solar across our open, rural land.”
Join us for a conversation with top legislators
Join us Thursday, Feb. 27, at Fitzpatrick Hall in Roanoke for the second annual Cardinal Way: Civility Rules luncheon with the top leaders of the Virginia General Assembly.
Hear from top Republican and Democratic House and Senate leaders as they discuss the issues on which they found consensus and those in which they remain far apart. They’ll also leave time to answer your questions.
Cardinal Way: Civility Rules is a project partially funded by a civil discourse grant from the American Press Institute. This event is also sponsored by Gentry Locke Consulting. Tickets are available here.