The American Planning Association published a very helpful Planning Advisory Service memo about the potential negative effects of large-scale solar projects on land use, especially in rural areas where agricultural and forestry land uses predominate.
Key topics addressed in the memo include:
- Impacts of large-scale solar on land use
- The economic factors to consider for large-scale solar
- Impact on agriculture and forested lands
- Future decommissioning costs
The full memo can be read online at this link or downloaded (for a fee) from the APA website.
Source: Darren Coffey AICP, “Planning for Utility-Scale Solar Energy Facilities,” American Planning Association, Planning Advisory Service Memo, Sep/Oct 2019, https://www.planning.org/publications/document/9184153/, accessed 20 Jan 2022
These excerpts from the American Planning Association’s Planning Advisory Service memo touch on hidden long-term costs of industrial-scale solar projects. Many solar developers try to reduce their security deposit for decommissioning by the amount of salvage value they say they’ll get from recycling, but there is little salvage value for used panels, even now. And the amount they do give deposit may not be enough to cover all the future costs of removing the hardware and restoring the land. Such gaps put local governments at risk for paying the cost of decommissioning themselves.
- Decommissioning can cost millions in today’s dollars. The industry strongly asserts that there is a significant salvage value to the solar arrays, but there may or may not be a market to salvage the equipment when removed. Further, the feasibility of realizing salvage value may depend on who removes the equipment—the operator, the tenant, or the landowner (who may not be the same parties as during construction)—as well as when it is removed.
- Providing for adequate security to ensure that financial resources are available to remove the equipment is a significant challenge. Cash escrow is the most reliable security for a locality but is the most expensive for the industry and potentially a financial deal breaker. Insurance bonds or letters of credit seem to be the most acceptable forms of security but can be difficult to enforce as a practical matter. The impact of inflation over decades is difficult to calculate; therefore, the posted financial security to ensure a proper decommissioning should be reevaluated periodically—usually every five years or so. The worst possible outcome for a community (and a farmer or landowner) would be an abandoned utility-scale solar facility with no resources available to pay for its removal.
planning for utility-scale solar energy facilities, pp 5-6
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The APA Planning Advisory Service memo highlights the long-term damage that is caused to topsoil from industrial-scale solar projects, an important consideration for those areas where agricultural and forestry land uses predominate. This is particularly important for projects that are on or are near ecologically critical lands, such as rivers, habitats of endangered or at risk species, wetlands, or forests. Making sure that solar projects are correctly removed is also critical to restoring the land afterwards.
- Agricultural and forested areas are typical sites for utility-scale solar facility uses. However, the use of prime agricultural land (as identified by the USDA or by state agencies) and ecologically sensitive lands (e.g., riparian buffers, critical habitats, hardwood forests) for these facilities should be scrutinized.
- For a solar facility, the site will need to be graded in places and revegetated to stabilize the soil. That vegetation typically needs to be managed (e.g., by mowing, herbicide use, or sheep grazing) over a long period of time. This prolonged vegetation management can change the natural characteristics of the soil, making restoration of the site for future agricultural use more difficult. While native plants, pollinator plants, and grazing options exist and are continually being explored, there are logistical issues with all of them, from soil quality impacts to compatibility of animals with the solar equipment.
- A deforested site can be reforested in the future, but over an additional extended length of time, and this may be delayed or the land left unforested at the request of the landowner at the time of decommissioning. Clearcutting forest in anticipation of a utility-scale solar application should be avoided but is not uncommon. This practice potentially undermines the credibility of the application, eliminates what could have been natural buffers and screening, and eliminates other landowner options to monetize the forest asset (such as for carbon or nutrient credits).
- For decommissioning, the industry usually stipulates removal of anything within 36 inches below the ground surface. Unless all equipment is specified for complete removal and this is properly enforced during decommissioning, future agricultural operations would be planting crops over anything left in the ground below that depth, such as metal poles, concrete footers, or wires.
Planning for Utility-Scale Solar Energy Facilities, p 4
See also: