In October, our Executive Director Alan Rowsome was invited by AES Corporation to tour the Spotsylvania Solar Center, a sprawling facility that is the largest of its kind anywhere east of the Rocky Mountains. It was an up-close and personal look at a development project that many organizations opposed back in 2018 because of its impact on the landscape.
Now running at full production, the Spotsylvania Solar Energy Center is projected to offset 825,000 tons of CO2 emissions each year. Solar panel centers of this size require large, flat, open land. If topography is not already present, it often must bemade via deforestation and grading or by repurposing farmland. The Spotsylvania Solar Center came about this way, as the land it was built on was once a thriving forest 67 miles from Washington, DC. This is why the intersection of land conservation and solar development is a difficult and complex topic.
A 2021 study by Virginia Commonwealth University found that most solar panel fields in Virginia required clear-cutting forests or taking over farmland. Why not just place panels on rooftops? We should do so and encourage it, but there aren’t nearly enough rooftops across Virginia to satisfy our consumption needs. Tradeoffs certainly need to be made to transition away from fossil fuel development fully, and large-scale solar facilities like Spotsylvania are needed to make a true impact on our energy consumption
“Our organization and others like us would have (and in many cases did) oppose this project when it was proposed in 2018 because nearly 3,500 acres of land set to be clearcut of trees to make room for the solar arrays was not a prudent climate tradeoff.” - Executive Director Alan Rowsome.
Where this large-scale land need becomes such a problematic tradeoff is obvious when one learns that Virginia has also committed to adding 30,000 acres of forest annually per the Chesapeake Bay Agreement. The pact is a multi-state cooperative approach to ensuring the health of our lands and waters. United States Forest Carbon Data indicates that forests absorb 13% of carbon emissions in the United States. Forests also provide habitat for wildlife, prevent soil erosion, and purify air and water. When solar centers are built where forests once existed, these ecosystem services are removed, and wildlife struggles to survive in and around the panels. Concentrated solar beams can blind birds and ignite or electrocute other small animals. There are ways to make solar fields more eco-friendly, like planting native and for pollinators. However, the extent to which large solar centers can benefit wildlife is usually minimal. Utilizing degraded or disturbed land should always be the first choice because once a forest is cut down, its ability to sequester carbon and other climate-heating gases is lost for generations.
Solar development is also taking over more and more farmland in Virginia every day. Removing farmland often puts farmers out of work and disrupts our food sources, but to their credit, AES has found creative ways to coexist with and support farmers. Solar panels absorb about 20% of the sunlight that hits them during the 5 hours of peak light each day; the remainder goes to the ground below. This can cause an overgrowth of grass. The solution: sheep. By utilizing sheep to graze in and around the solar arrays, AES can employ farmers and save on mowing costs. AES and other solar developers also find ways to incorporate agriculture, such as growing crops between rows of solar panels, known as agrivoltaics. Rising heat levels caused by climate change have proven too much for crops, even tomatoes, which typically thrive in warmer weather. Tomato crops have increased yields when grown in solar panel fields because of the shade panels create which facilitates humidity, conserves water, and lowers temperature. This method of agriculture works well with tomatoes but isn’t a solution for all crops, the same practice was attempted with wheat, cucumbers, potatoes, and lettuce and proved to be fruitless.
"We were told to look out for sheep 99, the most friendly of them all. She walked right up to us!"
Even as there are growing ways that solar companies are utilizing more of the land, many land trusts like ours have taken a stance against building large solar centers in forested or farmland areas. Our easements always prevent commercial solar operations; NVCT seeks to promote a sustainable energy economy; however, studies have shown that commercial-scale solar and wind are largely sitable in areas where they do not have to impact otherwise intact resources. Others have tried to work with solar plants by creating guidelines for where to build and how to minimize ecosystem disruption. Suggestions include building on land that has already been disturbed, protecting ecological resources like streams, and compromising with land use restrictions. Siting of solar development remains critically important, and not all sites are appropriate for the activity. We must have large, intact natural areas as well, and they are just as important – if not more so – than siting solar panels
Our best answer on whether solar development can coexist with land conservation is that it’s complicated. In the case of the Spotsylvania Solar Center, it is unlikely that the forest in question could ever have been saved. The land was too expensive for a land trust like NVCT to purchase, and heavy pressure from developers meant the only plausible future for the property was large-scale housing or the solar facility. Only half of the site was ultimately clearcut for solar development, so it is likely that the most land that ever would have been protected on the property has been, even if not permanently.
Now, the site creates renewable energy that benefits the community. This Solar Center generates $8.4 million in tax revenue for county services such as education, emergency response, and local infrastructure. It has also received about $5.5 million in local investments. However, should solar always be prioritized over preserving forests? Can they genuinely coexist with conservation if they ultimately require deforestation? These are questions we will continue to ask on a site-by-site basis, and perhaps the first step to better understanding all points of view was to engage with AES and understand the facility we just visited. As Rowsome puts it: “Ultimately, this is a very difficult and multi-faceted issue for land trusts like NVCT to navigate. Land is so precious, in such incredible demand, and so critically important to protect when possible. Solar energy development is not going away and more is needed, so conservation groups and solar developers need to and in some cases already are working together to make the best possible decisions for the land.”
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