Our Position on Solar in the Ag Reserve
Updated February 20, 2025
Introduction
The solar energy industry has targeted Maryland farmland to build industrial scale facilities. Companies are sending inquiries to landowners statewide to lease their land for the siting of 20 to 50 acre (or larger) solar panel arrays. The offers include eye-popping fees for such leases—five to 10 times what a landowner would be able make for leasing the same land to a contract farmer growing crops or raising farm animals.
Solar companies are also challenging local zoning ordinances that protect farmland. Most notably, a company called Chaberton is attempting to undermine Montgomery County’s restrictions on siting of large solar facilities on farmland in the Ag Reserve. You can read about that below.
Most recently, the solar industry helped write and is pushing proposed legislation in the Maryland legislature that would eclipse County laws that prohibit siting industrial-scale solar facilities on good quality farmland. If passed as written the bill would, for example, override Montgomery County’s solar zoning law that protects farmland in the Ag Reserve.
We are seeking changes to that proposed law—The Renewable Energy Certainty Act (SB 931/HB1036). We do not yet oppose the entire law which would also make it easier for solar companies to create so-called community solar projects on non-arable land and on rooftops throughout the state. That would benefit state and County initiatives to improve the supply of renewable (solar and other) energy to meet the state’s goal of sharply reducing climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions.
Please consider writing your local representatives in the state legislature to remove the offensive provisions in the law that would supplant good farmland with solar facilities.
Background
SCA helped shape a Montgomery County zoning ordinance in 2021 that allows farmers and landowners in the Ag Reserve—working with solar developers—to place ground-based solar arrays on portions of their land if those arrays don’t take prime arable land out of agricultural use.
Under this policy, solar arrays must meet certain requirements and be approved by County regulators. For now, the total acreage allowed for solar array placement in the Ag Reserve is 1,800 acres, which equates to about 2% of agricultural land in the County. In addition to preserving agricultural land, the rules governing the initiative protect forests and environmentally sensitive areas.
The ordinance permits up to two megawatts of energy per project. It also allows homeowners who install solar arrays (whether on their roofs or on the ground) to produce twice as much energy as they need and sell it back into the grid. Thus, if a homeowner needed 30 kilowatt-hours per day for their own needs, they could produce 60 and sell 30 back to the grid.
Report from the County
This policy and zoning change has been in effect for four years. In an assessment of the impact to date, published in December 2023, the County’s Planning Department took stock, highlighted some problems, and identified outcomes to date.
First, the report says two Ag Reserve solar projects are in process under the terms of the 2021 zoning change. Construction on both has begun. One project plans about 13 acres in solar, the other about 8 acres.
In the words of the report: “While [these projects] demonstrate a modest start to the County’s solar program…it also demonstrates it is possible to promote solar projects on agricultural lands, aiding in reducing carbon emissions and contributing towards our larger renewable energy and solar production goals, while ensuring agriculture remains the primary use within the Agricultural Reserve.”
Second, the report notes that the Maryland state legislature passed legislation in 2022 affecting “community” solar projects, including those on farms. Recent court decisions also apply. Both are complex. The upshot is that state law could eclipse County law for solar projects that will generate more than two megawatts of energy—the limit established under the 2021 solar initiative for projects on farmland in the Ag Reserve. And, notably, that state law also allows such larger “community” solar projects (up to 5 megawatts) to be on arable land if the landowner prefers.
This state regulation requires that such projects be vetted by a state agency called the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC). The regulation also requires that the PSC give “due consideration” to local zoning ordinances and laws.
Even so, the law, along with related recent court cases, has created a huge opening for solar companies and landowners interested in larger-scale solar projects on farmland (in and outside of the Ag Reserve).
Indeed, two such larger projects have been proposed in the Ag Reserve. Both are in the Poolesville-Dickerson area. One is a 3-megawatt project on approximately 11 acres within a 118-acre tract of land at 20507 Darnestown Road in Dickerson (“Chaberton Solar Sugarloaf”).
The other is a 4-megawatt project on 16 acres within a 53-acre tract of land at 17600 Whites Ferry Road, Poolesville (“Chaberton Solar Ramiere”). Both would be built in fields that have been farmed for years and are mostly made up of Class 2 soils (and thus a violation of Montgomery County law).
These two projects are the first tests of whether the PSC (and thus the state) will defer to County law when evaluating larger scale community solar projects—and if so, what will this look like? Chaberton Solar and the landowners they are working with assert that the state law eclipses County law and thus the projects should be approved. They further argue that the projects would benefit the public with locally produced renewable energy.
SCA together with Montgomery Countryside Alliance, the Montgomery County Farm Bureau, and Montgomery Agricultural Producers petitioned the PSC in 2024 to be a formal participant in the agency’s deliberations. That petition was accepted. The Chaberton Sugarloaf case has been underway at the PSC for almost a year. Montgomery County joined the four intervenor groups in early 2025 in opposing Chaberton’s proposal. A PSC decision is expected this spring.
SCA’s Position
SCA believes the PSC should defer to County law in these two cases. Why? Because the Montgomery County Council and interested parties spent two years (2020-2021) intensively debating the issue and, in the end, hammered out a workable compromise that would not risk sacrificing good farmland. Moreover, allowing the projects to move forward would set a precedent that would make it difficult for the PSC to turn down future similar projects. That could create, over time, significant pressure on landowners to break leases with farmers to accept lucrative offers from solar companies, thus taking agricultural land out of production to install solar panels. It may also pressure the County Council to modify its existing solar ordinance. The Montgomery County Planning Board in January recommended that the County Council reevaluate its solar zoning law.
To be clear, SCA strongly supports enhancing solar energy in Montgomery County, preferably for use within the County. In helping to craft the Ag Reserve solar zoning initiative in 2020 and 2021, our priority was to make sure that commercial solar companies didn’t gain access to arable farmland—by offering landowners more money for that land than they can make leasing the land to farmers or farming it themselves. (Solicitations from solar companies to farmers and landowners in the Ag Reserve and throughout the state have sharply increased in recent years.)
Our central mission is to protect and promote the Master Plan that created the Ag Reserve in 1980, the function of which is to preserve and expand farming in one-third of Montgomery County. Since then, SCA and other groups have fought hard to protect farmland and open space in the Ag Reserve from commercial interests that constantly seek to create exemptions.
Based on studies done by the Department of Agriculture, there is clearly ample land (that isn’t arable farmland) available in the County for solar energy arrays.
The Planning Department’s report acknowledges the value of honoring both the plan that created the Ag Reserve and the spirit of the 2021 solar zoning measure. We concur.
Where can I register my views?
The PSC regulates solar energy, along with electric and gas utilities. The two projects discussed above are under its purview, and the state requires the agency to hold public hearings on proposed projects. You can email the PSC through its web portal.