Renewable Energy’s Farmland Free-for-All

Farms are fast becoming one of the most powerful opponents to renewable energy in the United States, second perhaps only to the fossil fuel industry. And it’s frighteningly unclear how developers will resolve this problem – or if they even can.

As solar and wind has grown rapidly across the country, so too have protests against solar and wind power on “prime farmland,” a loose term used by industry and government officials to describe property best suited for growing lots of crops. Towns and counties are banning the construction of solar and wind farms on prime farmland. State regulators – including those run by Democrats – are restricting renewable development on prime farmland, and members of Congress are looking at cutting off or restricting federal funds to projects on prime farmland.

In theory, meeting our country’s climate goals and industry needs should require very little farmland. But those same wide expanses flush with sunlight and gusts of wind sought after by developers happen to often be used by farmers: A USDA study released this year found more than 90% of wind turbines and 70% of solar farms in rural areas were sited on agricultural land.

It would be easy for an activist or energy nerd to presume this farmland free-for-all is being driven by outside actors or adverse incentives (and there’s a little bit of that going on, as we’ll get to).

However, weeks of reporting – and internal Heatmap News datasets – have revealed to me that farmland opposition actually has a devilishly simple explanation: many large farm owners are just plain hostile to land use changes that could potentially, or even just hypothetically, impact their capacity to grow more crops.

This means there is no easy solution and as I’ll explain, it is unclear whether the renewables sector’s efforts to appear more accommodating to agricultural businesses – most notably agri-voltaics – will stem the tide of local complaints from rural farmers.

“This is a new land use that is very quickly accelerating across the country and one of the major reactions is just to that fact,” Ethan Winter of American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit promoting solar education in farm communities, told me. “These are people who’ve been farming this land for generations in some instances. The idea of doing anything to take it out of agricultural production is just hard for them, for their community, and it’s about the culture of their community, and if solar is something that can be considered compatible with agriculture.”

Tracking the conflict

Over 40% of all restrictive ordinances and moratoriums in Heatmap Pro's database are occurring in counties with large agricultural workforces.

In fact, our internal data via Heatmap Pro has found that agricultural employment can be a useful predictor of whether a community will oppose the deployment of renewables. It's particularly salient where there's large-scale, capital-intensive farming, likely because the kind of agriculture requiring expensive machinery, costly chemicals, and physical and financial infrastructure — think insurance and loans — indicates that farming is the economic cornerstone of that entire community.

Resentment against renewables is pronounced in the Corn Belt, but it’s also happening even in the bluest of states like Connecticut, where state environmental regulators have recommended against developing on prime farmland and require additional permits to build on preferred fertile soils. Or New York, where under pressure from farming groups including the state Farm Bureau, the state legislature last year included language in a new permitting authority law limiting the New York Power Authority from approving solar and wind on “land used in agricultural production” unless the project was agrivoltaics, which means it allows simultaneous farming of the property. The state legislature is now looking at additional curbs on siting projects in farmland as it considers new permitting legislation.

Deanna Fox, head of the New York Farm Bureau, explained to me that her organization’s bottom-up structure essentially means its positions are a consensus of its grassroots farm worker membership. And those members really don’t trust renewables to be safe for farmland.

“What happens when those solar arrays no longer work, or they become antiquated? Or farmland loses its agricultural designation and becomes zoned commercial? How does that impact ag districting in general? Does that land just become commercial? Can it go back to being agricultural land?” Fox asked. “If you were to talk to a group of farmers about solar, I would guarantee none of them would say anything about the emotional aspect of it. I don’t think that's what it really is for them. [And] if it’s emotional, it’s wrapped around the economics of it.”

Surveys of farmers have hinted that fears could be assuaged if developers took steps to make their projects more harmonious with agricultural work. As we reported last week, a survey by the independent research arm of the Solar Energy Industries Association found up to 70% of farmers they spoke with said they were “open to large-scale solar” but many sought stipulations for dual usage of the land for farming – a practice known as agrivoltaics.

Clearly, agrivoltaics and other simultaneous use strategies are what the industry wants to promote. As we hit send on last week’s newsletter, I was strolling around RE+, renewable energy’s largest U.S. industry conference. Everywhere I turned, I found publicity around solar and farming.

The Department of Energy even got in on the action. At the same time as the conference, the department chose to announce a new wave of financial prizes for companies piloting simultaneous solar energy and farming techniques.

“In areas where there has been a lot of loss of farmland to development, solar is one more factor that I think has worried folks in some communities,” Becca Jones-Albertus, director of DOE’s solar energy technologies office, told me during an interview at the conference. However agri-voltaics offer “a really exciting strategy because it doesn’t make this an either or. It’s a yes and.”

It remains to be seen whether these attempts at harmony will resolve any of the discord.

Grazing: Helpful or irrelevant?

One industry practice being marketed to farm communities that folks hope will soften opposition is sheep grazing at solar farms. At RE+, The American Solar Grazing Association, an advocacy group, debuted a documentary about the practice at the conference and had an outdoor site outside the showroom with sheep chilling underneath solar panel frames. The sheep display had a sign thanking sponsors including AES, Arevon, BP, EDF Renewables, and Pivot Energy.

Some developers like Avangrid have found grazing to be a useful way to mitigate physical project risks at solar farms in the Pacific Northwest. Out in rural Oregon and Washington, unkempt grasslands can present a serious fire risk. So after trying other methods, Avangrid partnered with an Oregon rancher, Cameron Krebs, who told me he understands why some farmers are skeptical about developers coming into their neck of the woods.

“Culturally speaking, this is agricultural land. These are communities that grow wheat and raise cattle. So my peers, when they put in the solar farms and they see it going out of production, that really bothers the community in general,” he said.

But Krebs doesn’t see solar farms with grazing the same way.

“It’s a retooling. It may not be corn production anymore. But we’re still going to need a lot of resources. We’re still going to need tire shops. I think there is a big fear that the solar companies will take the land out of production and then the meat shops and the food production would suffer because we don’t have that available on the landscape, but I think we can have utility scale solar that is healthy for our communities. And that really in my mind means honoring that soil with good vegetation.”

It’s important to note, however, that grazing can’t really solve renewables’ farmland problem. Often grazing is most helpful in dry Western desert. Not to mention sheep aren’t representative of all livestock – they’re a small percentage. And Heatmap Pro’s database has found an important distinction between farms focused on crops versus livestock — the latter isn’t as predisposed to oppose renewable energy.

The uproar around Oak Run

Ground zero for the future of renewables on farmland is Savion's proposed Oak Run project in Ohio, which at up to 800 megawatts of generation capacity would be the state’s largest solar farm. The developer also plans to let farmers plant and harvest crops in between the solar arrays, making it the nation’s largest agri-voltaics site if completed.

But Oak Run is still being opposed by nearby landowners and local officials citing impacts to farmland. At Oak Run’s proposed site, neighboring township governments have passed resolutions opposing construction, as has the county board of commissioners, and town and county officials sued to undo Oak Run’s approval at the Ohio Power Siting Board. Although that lawsuit was unsuccessful, its backers want to take the matter to the state Supreme Court.

Some of this might be tied to the pure fact Ohio is super hostile to renewables right now. Over a third of counties in the state have restricted or outright banned solar and wind projects, according to Heatmap Pro’s database.

But there’s more at play here. The attorney representing town and county officials is Jack Van Kley, a lawyer and former state government official who remains based in Ohio and who has represented many farms in court for myriad reasons. I talked to Van Kley last week for an hour about why he opposes renewables projects (“they’re anything but clean in my opinion”), his views on global warming (“I don’t get involved in the dispute over climate change”) and a crucial fact that might sting: He says at least roughly two thirds of his clientele are farmers or communities reliant on agricultural businesses.

“It’s neighbor against neighbor in these communities,” he told me. “You’ve got a relatively low number of farmers who want to lease their land so that the solar companies can put solar panels on them for thirty or forty years, and it’s just a few landowners that are profiting from these projects.”

Van Kley spoke to a concern voiced by his clients I haven’t really heard addressed by solar developers much: overall impacts to irrigation. Specifically, he said an outsized concern among farmers is simply how putting a solar or wind farm adjacent or close to their property will impact how groundwater and surface water moves in the area, which can impact somebody’s existing agricultural drainage infrastructure.

“If you do that next to another property that is being farmed, you’ll kill the crop because you’ll flood the crop,” he claimed. “This is turning out to be a big issue for farmers who are opposing these facilities.”

Some have tried to paint Van Kley as funded or assisted by the fossil fuel lobby or shadowy actors. Van Kley has denied any involvement in those kinds of backroom dealings. While there’s glimpses of evidence gas and coal money plays at least a minor role with other characters fomenting opposition in the state, I really have no evidence of him being one of these people right now. It’s much easier and simpler to reason that he’s being paid by another influential sect – large landowners, many of whom work in agriculture.

That’s the same conclusion John Boeckl reached. Boeckl, an Army engineer, is one of the property owners leasing land for construction of the Oak Run project. He supports Oak Run being built and has submitted testimony in the legal challenge over its approvals. Though Boeckl certainly wants to know more about who is funding the opposition and has his gripes with neighbors who keep putting signs on his property that say “no solar on prime farmland,” he hasn’t witnessed any corporate skullduggery from shadowy outside entities.

“I think it’s just farmers being farmers,” he said. “They don’t want to be told what to do with their land.”