Developers of utility-scale solar farms in Maryland might have to start compensating counties for erecting their sprawling arrays in preservation areas. In exchange, those projects would face fewer regulatory restrictions.
Local government officials and land-preservation groups say they’re working to soften as much of the measure’s impact as they can before it is submitted as a bill in next spring’s three-month state legislative session. But they say they’re unlikely to accomplish much because of the urgency in Annapolis to meet the state’s ambitious greenhouse gas-reduction goals.
“The trendline on this issue is worrisome,” Michael Sanderson, executive director of the Maryland Association of Counties, recently told the Worcester County Commissioners at a solar workshop. “And our forecast in the General Assembly is we think we are on the losing side of this debate.”
Governor Wes Moore’s administration has been working in recent months on what has been dubbed a “compromise” bill in collaboration with environmental leaders, the energy industry and counties. As of mid-September, the draft legislation was 80-90% complete, according to Sanderson’s group.
The state has long sought to wrest more regulatory control of solar-siting decisions from local governments. A 2019 ruling by Maryland’s highest court affirmed that local governments have no ability to outright reject large solar projects.
State lawmakers failed to coalesce behind a bill during this year’s session that would have addressed the industry’s biggest flashpoint: how to offset the development of farmland and forests.
The issue has been particularly heated in Carroll County, where leaders enacted a six-month moratorium on large-scale solar approvals in March 2023 and subsequently banned any siting on farmland.
The current version of the legislation would establish a 4-mile-wide “solar development corridor” around existing major electric transmission lines. There, developers would get faster approvals and reduced planning costs – and counties would only have limited oversight.
In October, land conservancy advocates outlined their concerns in a letter. They estimate that three-quarters of the nearly 3 million acres contained within that proposed corridor are designated by the state to remain free from development. In some parts of the Eastern Shore, that number is as high as 96%, they said.
The proposed legislation would require developers to pay $3,500 per acre in protected areas within the corridor. That money would go toward a fund in the surrounding county for preserving land elsewhere for agricultural, conservation, historic preservation or related purposes. Such lands lying outside the corridor would generate a $5,000-per-acre payment.
Conservation groups say the payments should be based on current land valuations in each county instead of a flat, statewide fee. And while the bill wouldn’t loosened restrictions for easements, their letter nonetheless urged its authors to make that “explicitly clear.”