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.