A Solar Future for Rural Communities?

By Larry Wohlers

Imagine a Virginia where every small farm or rural landowner had the opportunity to own just a few acres of solar panels. Not only would they no longer pay electricity bills, they would also receive regular revenue from solar generation. This would transform their incomes; yet do so with installations small enough to not harm the surrounding environment. In fact, studies have shown that small-scale solar production can be integrated very effectively into pasture or cropland.

So, it sounds like a match made in heaven, doesn’t it? America needs more solar energy; solar production needs rural land; and, rural communities could certainly use the income from small-scale, local production owned by local residents.

Except… that is not where solar production is headed today. What is happening? How about a proliferation of mammoth solar projects that, all too often, disfigure rural environments while steering the profits to large utilities.

And not surprisingly, rural residents don’t like it one bit. Why, they say, should the income from production on our land go to outsiders, and we get only destruction of our views? In fact, come to think of it, isn’t that what happened when large corporations used their financial power to monopolize meat production? The boardrooms have taken the profits and the local producers and their communities are stuck with an environmental mess.

So here’s the thing: if Virginia’s solar advocates (who are mostly urban consumers, after all) really want more solar production in Virginia, they, too, need to take this problem seriously. It is one thing to build mega-solar farms in Western deserts where nobody lives; it is quite another to do so in Virginia’s beautiful and populated countryside.

If we truly want to scale up solar production here, we will have to design a different model, one that anchors both the control and the income of solar production locally.

Fortunately, we are still in the early days of solar energy expansion. So, now is the time to think creatively. Last year, the Virginia legislature took a first step in the right direction by passing the Virginia Clean Economy Act. It reduced the ridiculously tight restrictions on small solar projects that the utilities had long used to stifle independent solar production. That was a good start.

However, we need to think bigger and smarter. The truth is even small solar commercial installations need both substantial financing up front and technical expertise to support it. (A 1 megawatt solar project may take only a few acres of land, but it could easily cost $1 million to install.) Local governments as well will need help, beginning with the expertise to figure out how to channel solar developments in ways that prioritize rural communities. And, we will have to figure out how a rural-friendly model of solar production fits efficiently into the grid.

Where are rural communities going to get all that support? The big utility companies have no reason to help – they want to control solar production themselves. And the model of massive solar installations works just fine for them.

In short, now is the time to think about how to level the playing field so that solar production expansion becomes a win for both urban consumers and rural producers. Think, for example, about how the creation of member-owned rural electric cooperatives in the 1930s transformed rural life. Those coops didn’t just magically appear; they were the direct result of far-sighted political leadership.

That is the kind of leadership we need now. Inertia and concentrated financial power are pushing the industry in the direction of mammoth solar farms. In the long run, however, that will be bad for the future of Virginia’s solar industry. Nobody wants a mega-eyesore in their back yard.

Of course, it will not be easy initially to build a system in which a network of small solar producers, closely integrated economically and environmentally into their communities, can flourish. Doing so, however, will be better for everyone.

It should be up to our federal, state, and county leadership to make that happen. But most of all, it is up to the rest of us to push our political leaders to figure this out, promptly.