Virginia Mercury Publishes Opinion Piece by Jared Burden Arguing for Local Control of Land Use for Solar Developments
Large-scale solar development is widespread in rural Virginia. Such projects usually require special use permit approval at the county level, among other actions.
In the face of citizen opposition to large solar projects, often of the “not in my backyard” variety, some Virginia county governing bodies have decided that narrowing their own options is the answer.
Ways for a county to try to do this include establishing acreage or density percentage caps on solar, or to putting moratoria or bans in place.
In a recent opinion piece published by Virginia Mercury, Jared Burden, in his capacity as Virginia Policy Advisor for The Center for Infrastructure and Economic Development, argues that such approaches have problems.
The right approach, he argues—for Virginians, for jobs, and for our clean-energy future—is the hard work of case-by-case review of solar projects by Boards, Planning Commissions and staffs.
Read Jared’s piece here.
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