County Solar Regulation Before Local Development and the Role of Surrounding Development

• In Event: Solar Policy — Investment, Diffusion, and Local Governance

Abstract

The rapid expansion of large-scale solar (LSS) development in the United States has created new land-use planning challenges for local governments. In states where counties hold primary authority over LSS siting, counties adopt solar ordinances that establish where and under what conditions projects may be developed. This study examines when counties adopt solar ordinances relative to LSS development, distinguishing among counties with development within their boundaries, in surrounding counties, in both or in neither. We construct a county-year panel by combining ordinance records with project data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s EIA-860 for 2015 through 2024 and estimate discrete-time hazard models of first recorded ordinance adoption. The results show that counties with surrounding development but no local projects have higher odds of adopting solar ordinances than counties without observed development. This association remains after accounting for prior ordinance adoption in neighboring counties. Counties with local development are also more likely to adopt ordinances, and the estimated association for surrounding-only development is comparable in magnitude to that for counties with both local and surrounding development. These findings suggest that county solar regulation can begin before direct local project experience and that local regulatory environments evolve alongside broader regional development conditions. They highlight the importance of considering development beyond jurisdictional boundaries when assessing how decentralized land-use regulations emerge during renewable energy transitions.

Author

• Heerae Lee, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author