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As large solar fields proliferate across America, pushback to them in rural communities is growing, fueled by a mix of disinformation and genuine concern about losing open land to development.
The tension is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Virginia, which has ambitious clean energy goals but is also the land of Thomas Jefferson — where many residents take pride in their rolling hills, winding rivers, and agrarian roots.
Today, nearly two-thirds of Virginia’s counties effectively prohibit utility-scale solar, according to the renewables industry. But legislation rocketing through the state’s Democratic-controlled General Assembly would help change that, preventing outright bans while still allowing localities to reject large-scale solar projects on an individual basis.
Senate and House versions of the measure have already cleared their respective chambers, with most Democrats for and most Republicans against. The proposal is backed by solar developers and a powerful government advisory commission on energy policy, and is poised to reach the desk of Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, in the coming weeks.
Still, most environmental and climate advocacy groups in Virginia have no position on the bill, and some conservationists are opposed — exposing the conflicts that can arise even among interests that all support the clean energy transition.
And the renewables industry acknowledges that if the bill does become law, wary local governments will still need to be convinced that solar fields are a net positive.
“This bill is a relative light touch to address solar siting in a way that we hope will result in more projects getting to make their case to a community, while preserving local control,” said Evan Vaughan, executive director of Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition, a nonprofit that represents over 50 large-scale solar, storage, and wind developers and manufacturers.
In many ways, Virginia is primed for utility-scale solar development. The state is the data center capital of the world, with a growing number of facilities needing more and more electricity. Large solar is one of the cheapest and quickest ways to satisfy that demand.
There’s also the Virginia Clean Economy Act. Adopted in 2020, the law requires both of the state’s investor-owned utilities to decarbonize by midcentury and sets a target of at least 16 gigawatts of solar and land-based wind farms to help them do so. Already on the uptick, utility-scale solar exploded after the law was adopted, with the state averaging more than 1 gigawatt of installations each year through 2024, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Virginia now ranks ninth on the group’s list of states with the most utility-scale solar.
But in tandem with this explosion, county resistance to solar has risen — spurred in part by solar developers that fail to control sediment runoff during construction and operation, contributing to pollution in the Chesapeake Bay and other waterways.
Local project approvals peaked in 2022 and declined after that, according to the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition. The group says that 64% of Virginia counties now bar large-scale solar in practice, either through outright bans or unworkable and costly restrictions.
For instance, Greenville County allows solar only on industrial or business property. Accomack, Appomattox, and Powhatan counties prohibit solar on agricultural land. Washington County bans solar on land that has been clear-cut or heavily timbered in the last five years and land within five miles of an airport.
“Virginia should be an attractive market, and it certainly has attracted a lot of development interests in the past,” Vaughan said. But the prohibitions are helping to change that. “We are seeing many solar companies looking at Virginia and saying, ‘We don’t see a lot of opportunity here anymore.’”
Indeed, large solar in the state has stalled dramatically, with new installations plummeting in 2025. The slowdown is especially salient as already-high electricity rates continue to push upward, Vaughan said.
“Utility-scale solar is still the cheapest source of new electricity generation, period,” he added. “So, this difficulty of bringing new solar projects online does have a direct link to affordability.”
The legislation nearing Spanberger’s desk builds on an unsuccessful measure introduced two years ago by Democratic Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg of Henrico County, just outside Richmond. That proposal would have simply outlawed blanket bans on solar, along with size and density restrictions, while retaining local authority over permitting. It was approved by the Senate but languished in the House.
Since then, VanValkenburg explained to colleagues in committee last month, he’s endeavored to address the proposal’s critics. This year’s bill, backed by the state’s influential Commission on Electric Utility Regulation, would still prevent outright and de facto bans. But it would also establish a host of statewide standards for solar farms, including setbacks from roads and wetlands, height limitations, and measures to limit water pollution during construction. Plus, it would require solar developers to pay for equipment removal and land restoration when a project is decommissioned.
“Local governments complained — correctly, by the way — about bad solar projects and bad solar developers coming in,” VanValkenburg said. The edited legislation, he said, gives locales guidelines for stopping those bad actors.
Even if the criteria are met, the bill wouldn’t force approval of solar fields, VanValkenburg stressed in committee. Developers would still need a special-use permit or siting agreement from local governments.
“They can reject every single project that comes before them,” VanValkenburg said. “They just need to take them up one at a time. They can’t outright ban solar.”
Utility-scale renewable developers in Virginia have made the proposal one of their top priorities: It is not a silver bullet, they say, but an important foot in the door with some locales. And though communities may still rebuff large solar fields, they would have to submit their reasons for doing so to state utility regulators, keyed to the new siting standards.
“The bill improves transparency and fairness,” said Evangeline Hobbs, a deputy director at the American Clean Power Association, “by requiring that project denials be documented and publicly explained.”
VanValkenburg’s efforts at compromise, meanwhile, seem to have borne fruit. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, for instance, testified in favor of the new legislation last month, despite having had “reservations” about the bill in the past.
“The draft that we’re moving towards incorporates more robust boundaries for our wetlands and tributaries,” Jay Ford, Virginia policy manager for the group, said in remarks to the committee. “This is a really important step.”
“Groups like us,” Ford continued, “we’re always in an awkward place here because we know we need to accelerate the clean energy deployment. And we also know we need to take care of our natural resources. We don’t think it should be an either-or proposition. And we’re really grateful to the senator for helping us get to that point.”
Sen. Danica Roem, a Democrat who represents rapidly developing Prince William County and has prioritized tree conservation, also praised VanValkenburg.
“He’s worked in good faith with me repeatedly on legislation … willing to try to meet me halfway,” she said. “The local option part of this,” she said, whereby governments still have the ability to reject projects, “is a pretty non-offensive way to go about dealing with the issue.”
VanValkenburg’s bill, Senate Bill 347, cleared committee and the full Senate last week. A similar proposal by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, a Democrat representing parts of Alexandria and Fairfax County, passed committee last week and the House of Delegates yesterday. That measure, House Bill 711, includes stricter setbacks from Chesapeake Bay wetlands.
At least one of the versions must clear the other chamber to reach the governor’s desk — though no more action is expected until at least the latter half of the month.
Not everyone is on board with VanValkenburg’s and Herring’s proposals. The Virginia Farm Bureau, which advocates for farmers and the agricultural industry, and the Virginia Association of Counties oppose the legislation, representatives said during the Senate committee debate last week.
Most environmental advocacy groups haven’t prioritized the legislation one way or another: It’s not part of the community’s shared list of priorities before the General Assembly.
Two conservation organizations, meanwhile, spoke against the bill in committee: Friends of the Rappahannock, a river protection group, and The Piedmont Environmental Council, a promoter of solar panels paired with crops.
“We fully recognize and agree that we must not allow a patchwork of local ordinances to become a de facto ban on solar energy development,” the council said in an email to Canary Media. “If we desire science-based best management practices, and we absolutely should, we must initiate a process through our state agencies,” the statement continued, one that is “inclusive” of environmental advocates, subject matter experts, and local governments.
This continued skepticism is one reason the solar industry isn’t 100% sanguine, even as the legislation looks primed for passage by the General Assembly. Spanberger could try to amend it before signing it into law — her prerogative under the Virginia legislative process.
And no matter what, the solar industry knows it has to earn back trust from some locals.
“Developers are always going to have to do the hard work of convincing a community that their project is a good addition,” Vaughan said. “That’s not going to change.”
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