Members of the Virginia General Assembly are about to return to the Capitol and consider hundreds of amendments from the governor.
The future is about to get a lot brighter for solar energy. Or, at least, that's the intention of Senator Schuyler VanValkenburg, a Democrat from Henrico County. He has a bill that will force local governments to consider all applications for solar projects rather than having a blanket denial.
"We see these kinds of ideological fights about solar where we see localities talking about whether they should ban them or not. Where I think a much more productive conversation is if you take each project up one at a time, you're talking to the property owner, you're looking at the economics of a project, you're seeing if it makes sense, if it has good standards," VanValkenburg says. Trying to turn down the temperature a little bit, maybe get a little bit more solar energy online."
Local governments oppose the bill, saying they should have the ability to handle land use the way they want to.
"If somebody wanted to make an application for a utility-scale solar, even though it's not an allowed use in an industrial zone, you have to review that and go through the process and then if you wanted to deny it, you could," says Joe Lerch, Director of Local Government Policy at the Virginia Association of Counties. "And so, I think this is interfering with the overall land use and comprehensive planning at the local level just for this one use."
The governor made some technical amendments to the bill, and Senator VanValkenburg says he'll accept them as friendly amendments when lawmakers reconvene this week.
