Most of Virginia restricts solar farms. Lawmakers want to change that.

As large solar fields proliferate across America, pushback to them in rural communities is growing, fueled by a mix of disinformation and genuine concern about losing open land to development.

The tension is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Virginia, which has ambitious clean energy goals but is also the land of Thomas Jefferson — where many residents take pride in their rolling hills, winding rivers, and agrarian roots.

Today, nearly two-thirds of Virginia’s counties effectively prohibit utility-scale solar, according to the renewables industry. But legislation rocketing through the state’s Democratic-controlled General Assembly would help change that, preventing outright bans while still allowing localities to reject large-scale solar projects on an individual basis.

Senate and House versions of the measure have already cleared their respective chambers, with most Democrats for and most Republicans against. The proposal is backed by solar developers and a powerful government advisory commission on energy policy, and is poised to reach the desk of Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, in the coming weeks.

Still, most environmental and climate advocacy groups in Virginia have no position on the bill, and some conservationists are opposed — exposing the conflicts that can arise even among interests that all support the clean energy transition.

And the renewables industry acknowledges that if the bill does become law, wary local governments will still need to be convinced that solar fields are a net positive.

“This bill is a relative light touch to address solar siting in a way that we hope will result in more projects getting to make their case to a community, while preserving local control,” said Evan Vaughan, executive director of Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition, a nonprofit that represents over 50 large-scale solar, storage, and wind developers and manufacturers.

The rise of local solar pushback in Virginia

In many ways, Virginia is primed for utility-scale solar development. The state is the data center capital of the world, with a growing number of facilities needing more and more electricity. Large solar is one of the cheapest and quickest ways to satisfy that demand.

There’s also the Virginia Clean Economy Act. Adopted in 2020, the law requires both of the state’s investor-owned utilities to decarbonize by midcentury and sets a target of at least 16 gigawatts of solar and land-based wind farms to help them do so. Already on the uptick, utility-scale solar exploded after the law was adopted, with the state averaging more than 1 gigawatt of installations each year through 2024, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Virginia now ranks ninth on the group’s list of states with the most utility-scale solar.

Local project approvals peaked in 2022 and declined after that, according to the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition. The group says that 64% of Virginia counties now bar large-scale solar in practice, either through outright bans or unworkable and costly restrictions.

For instance, Greenville County allows solar only on industrial or business property. Accomack, Appomattox, and Powhatan counties prohibit solar on agricultural land. Washington County bans solar on land that has been clear-cut or heavily timbered in the last five years and land within five miles of an airport.

“Virginia should be an attractive market, and it certainly has attracted a lot of development interests in the past,” Vaughan said. But the prohibitions are helping to change that. ​“We are seeing many solar companies looking at Virginia and saying, ​‘We don’t see a lot of opportunity here anymore.’”

Indeed, large solar in the state has stalled dramatically, with new installations plummeting in 2025. The slowdown is especially salient as already-high electricity rates continue to push upward, Vaughan said.

“Utility-scale solar is still the cheapest source of new electricity generation, period,” he added. ​“So, this difficulty of bringing new solar projects online does have a direct link to affordability.”

A failed bill leads to compromise

The legislation nearing Spanberger’s desk builds on an unsuccessful measure introduced two years ago by Democratic Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg of Henrico County, just outside Richmond. That proposal would have simply outlawed blanket bans on solar, along with size and density restrictions, while retaining local authority over permitting. It was approved by the Senate but languished in the House.

Since then, VanValkenburg explained to colleagues in committee last month, he’s endeavored to address the proposal’s critics. This year’s bill, backed by the state’s influential Commission on Electric Utility Regulation, would still prevent outright and de facto bans. But it would also establish a host of statewide standards for solar farms, including setbacks from roads and wetlands, height limitations, and measures to limit water pollution during construction. Plus, it would require solar developers to pay for equipment removal and land restoration when a project is decommissioned.

“Local governments complained — correctly, by the way — about bad solar projects and bad solar developers coming in,” VanValkenburg said. The edited legislation, he said, gives locales guidelines for stopping those bad actors.