Driving around Sussex County, there’s a good chance you’ll spot bright orange signs sticking out of the front lawns of some homes and businesses.
“Stop Sussex Solar: SAY NO to Industrial Solar,” the signs read.
These signs are part of a growing movement against large solar projects. Residents have built a Facebook page with more than 1,000 followers and often pack government meetings to voice their opposition.
Larry Diehl, a retired attorney who leads a community group against industrial solar, said there are already several projects in Sussex County, which spans about 500 square miles between Suffolk and Richmond and includes the towns of Wakefield and Waverly.
“Enough is enough,” Diehl said. “We should not be a dumping ground for solar.”
State officials and developers say local opposition has become one of the biggest obstacles to building more solar power, at a time when energy demand is exploding, largely because of power-hungry data centers.
The state is also racing to meet the terms of 2020’s Virginia Clean Economy Act, which sets a goal to use only carbon-free electricity by 2045.
Some local officials see solar as a key way to gain revenue in rural areas experiencing population decline, and for farmers to earn passive income from their land.
The debate is playing out in rural communities across Virginia, including Suffolk, Gloucester and James City County.
The issue is now reaching a fever pitch, with lawmakers grappling with how to find a solution that balances state priorities and local concerns.
“We've got this absolute whirling maelstrom of localities and developers at war with each other,” said Susan Seward, a former member of Sussex County’s Board of Supervisors. “Something's gotta give.”
Community concerns
Molly Dowless was born and raised in Sussex County on a family farm passed down since the Colonial Era.
“It's an original land grant farm, so it's never been out of the family since it was patented from King George II,” Dowless said. “We've been there a while.”
These days, her property’s acreage is divided between crops, such as corn and cotton, timberland and open space, including woods and a cemetery.
A few years ago, Dowless got a call from someone interested in using about 50 acres of her land for a project called Blackwater Solar, which would encompass several thousand acres.
Idaho-based Clenera offered Dowless more than $2 million to lease the land over the life of the project.
But after doing some research, “it was very clear that something on the scale of this size, there's no way it would not negatively impact the area around it,” Dowless said. “So the decision was a no.”
She has since helped spearhead the Stop Sussex Solar movement and spent countless hours researching Blackwater.
Clenera’s current proposal is to build a solar farm on 4,800 acres, producing 600 megawatts of electricity or enough to power roughly 67,000 homes. The company says Sussex would earn about $3.8 million in annual revenue from the project.
Dowless said she does not oppose solar altogether, such as on rooftops, paved land or brownfield sites.
Her concerns center around usable land. Blackwater in particular is simply too big, she said – more than twice the size of nearby towns.
Clenera would clear trees on some timberland to make way for panels. Residents also worry about issues with stormwater runoff. Because panels do not absorb water, rainfall that runs off of them can wash away loose soil below and contribute to erosion.
Solar experts say the problem can be easily mitigated. But Sussex residents point to an existing project in the town of Waverly that was fined by the state for stormwater violations.
Ed Rumler, development director with Clenera, acknowledged “there have been some bad projects done in the state.”
But the company spent years carefully designing the Blackwater project to include protections, he said.
“In a lot of ways, what we're battling right now is, we can make all the improvements in the world and learn from mistakes that the industry has made, but we can't put those into practice,” Rumler said. “It created an environment where it's difficult to move forward.”
Sussex County’s Board of Supervisors voted down permitting for Blackwater last year, and Clenera withdrew its application. Now the company’s trying again.
Rumler said they’ve made several changes in response to community concerns. That includes reducing the overall size, nixing a battery storage facility that was originally proposed, leaving buffers of trees around the project and allowing the county to directly monitor construction.
The company also plans to plant native grasses and flowers throughout the installation to offset tree losses and boost pollinator habitat.
“It's a really good solar project, and we're going to do what we can to get it built,” he said. “That just requires some persistence and some willingness to change and work with the community.”
Clenera has already cleared one hurdle that often slows down energy projects: approval from the regional power grid operator, PJM.
An economic boon for rural Virginia?
Not everyone in Sussex County opposes solar.
Seward, for example, sees the industry as a saving grace. She spent eight years on the Board of Supervisors, starting in 2016.
That happened to be when solar developers started coming to town, and she was skeptical.
“I was initially one of the loudest voices against it: ‘This is a terrible thing. It's going to destroy our countryside, and we're getting nothing for it,’” Seward said.
Over time, she changed her mind, as the General Assembly granted localities more opportunities for revenue from solar development, including requiring developers to create siting agreements with localities.
Seward likens it to the proffer system, where homebuilders offer investments in local schools or infrastructure to help offset the impacts of development. Real estate taxes are another factor.
“When you think about farm or forestland that had previously been assessed at anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 an acre, you're talking about a quadrupling of that acre of land on the real estate tax roll,” she said. “When you add all of this together, the locality now has some skin in the game.”
Seward owns a consulting firm and now works with Clenera on the Blackwater project.
She said she doesn’t advocate for local governments to approve every solar proposal that comes their way.
But she sees solar as one of the only ways for localities to increase their revenue to fund critical services while losing population, as well as providing landowners with additional income.
“If not done correctly, it could hurt. But done correctly, it could really help,” Seward said. “I think we've seen some localities where it's been done correctly, and they're going to start reaping that benefit. And there are counties that are going to be left behind.”
“An uphill battle”
The debate over solar’s impact on land use is happening around the country. But officials say several factors make Virginia somewhat of a special case.
For one, Virginia is known as the data center capital of the world, home to a growing number of warehouses that require large amounts of energy and water to cool computers that run 24-7.
Artificial intelligence is driving increased demand for data centers, driving up pressure for more energy as a result.
In a report last year, the Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission outlined what it would take to accommodate projected demand: Doubling the rate at which it’s currently creating solar facilities, expanding wind power beyond what Dominion is already building, constructing a large natural gas plant roughly every one and a half years and getting nuclear power from small-scale reactors that have not yet been built anywhere in the U.S.
Officials say solar is the easiest and cheapest form of energy to build.
“There's nothing but demand,” said Rumler, with developer Clenera. “In Virginia, mostly what stops projects at this point is local permitting.”
Blake Cox is chief operating officer for Energy Right, a conservative organization that advocates for clean energy. He said the nonprofit has found more than 30 local ordinances passed around the state that prohibit or restrict industrial solar development.
“It is in many ways an uphill battle,” Cox said.
He said Virginia needs to take an “all of the above” approach to produce more energy, but solar is the fastest option.
“If opposition’s coming out against solar, what other types of energy are we going to permit?”
Rumler said Virginia is a little unique in that the localities have more control, giving developers little recourse to appeal denials. Some states have boards that allow companies to do so. Virginia lawmakers have proposed similar ideas, which angered many local governments.
Del. Rip Sullivan, a Democrat from Northern Virginia, sponsored legislation at this year’s General Assembly session that would have created a statewide resource center to advise localities considering solar projects and develop a model ordinance to streamline project siting and permitting.
He said he and his colleagues have spent several years trying to figure out the best way to move forward.
“How can we try to find a way to navigate that intersection and to meet our statewide energy needs, while respecting local decision-making authority, which is of course a tradition in Virginia?” Sullivan said. “It should not be a rural versus urban question.”
A changing landscape
Virginia ranks seventh among states in utility-scale solar generation. But the industry’s growth has stagnated because of stricter urban planning measures, according to recent research by Virginia Commonwealth University.
VCU evaluated how utility-scale solar has transformed land around the state, prompted by community concerns that the industry is eating up land that’s valuable for agriculture or conservation.
Large-scale solar farms span roughly 30,000 acres across Virginia, researchers said. About half are on former forestland and nearly 30% on former cropland.
VCU concluded that only a handful of projects were built on land that had high conservation value, but that lawmakers should do more to ensure protections.
One new piece of legislation took effect this summer, requiring developers of large solar projects to offset impacts on prime farmland by providing conservation easements to preserve the same amount of land. Farmers in Hampton Roads recently told WHRO they’re skeptical the regulations will stem farmland loss.
Diehl, the retired attorney and resident of the Coppahaunk neighborhood in Sussex County, said rural areas should not be wholly responsible for powering data centers hundreds of miles away.
“I think the answer is, if there's going to be solar, it should be distributed evenly everywhere,” he said. “Sussex, we've done our share.”
