Our Position on Solar Energy in Montgomery County and Maryland

Updated: July 18, 2025

Note: The Summer 2025 issue of PLENTY magazine features an article by SCA President Steven Findlay on the new state solar law, which went into effect July 1. The piece explores how the legislation evolved, what it does, and the debate surrounding it.

Click here to view/download the full article.

Below is an updated web post on this issue. Details on the new law—which are complex—can be found in the PLENTY piece and are not addressed in this post.

A new state law—The Renewable Energy Certainty Act—went into effect on July 1. It aims to significantly expand solar energy generation in Maryland. It does that by:

Streamlining regulations for the assessment of proposed ground-based solar facilities
Giving solar companies easier access to farmland—around 120,000 acres throughout the state, and
Preventing counties from denying permits for utility-scale solar projects.

We’ll now see how the law affects the solar industry—whether it prompts a flood or just a trickle of new proposals. We’ll see how the state’s Public Service Commission (PSC), which is charged with reviewing solar proposals, adapts its process to the new law. We’ll see how easily the state’s energy companies and regulators accommodate new solar proposals—that is, accept them for addition to the grid, and in what timeframe. And, finally, we’ll see just how many landowners/farmers in the Ag Reserve are interested in converting some of their land from agriculture to solar energy generation.

Before the law passed the legislature in April, no certainty existed around the scope of landowner interest, beyond the anecdotal and a few projects already in process.

Joined by Montgomery Countryside Alliance (MCA), the Montgomery Farm Bureau (MFB), and Montgomery Agricultural Producers (MAP), SCA will be closely tracking implementation of the law and solar proposals in the Ag Reserve and Montgomery County.

The state’s Department of Agriculture is due to release a fact sheet and Q&A on the law soon. We’ll share those with you when we get them.

Solar companies continue to contact landowners in and near the Ag Reserve, offering to evaluate their land for possible solar development. Neither state nor county officials appear to be tracking those offers. Landowners have reported solar offers that would net them 10 to 20 times more money than leasing to a farmer.

That issue and the concept of converting historically agricultural land to non-farm use triggered fierce opposition to the new law in some quarters. SCA shared that concern and fought to amend the bill.

Our main concern: the law appears to create a “slippery slope” that could undermine the ag economy and Ag Reserve over time. But just how steep that slippery slope might be depends on many factors—not the least of which is how the entities that regulate energy supply react.

The most important of those entities is PJM Interconnection. PJM is responsible for operating the wholesale energy market in 13 states and Washington, DC, including Maryland. For years, PJM has told state lawmakers and regulators that it was “backlogged” on solar projects—because such projects had proliferated. Will that backlog now change under the new law and amid rising energy demand? It’s not clear.

Several local solar projects in the regulatory pipeline may provide further insight on how things will go.

One (Chaberton Sugarloaf) is a 3-megawatt project on approximately 11 acres in Dickerson. Another (Chaberton Ramiere) is a 4-megawatt project on 16 acres near Poolesville. A third (Mountain Vale) is a 2-megawatt project on 11 acres at 17700 Barnesville Rd. And a fourth (Project Victoria) is a 4.3-megawatt project at 15220 River Rd in Darnestown (as sister to a 2.5-megawatt solar installation nearby at 13330 Signal Tree Lane, which is already approved and under construction.)

Three of those projects (Dickerson, Poolesville, and Darnestown) are proposed by Chaberton Solar, a company based in Rockville. If approved by the PSC, Chaberton Sugarloaf and Ramiere would be built on land that have been farmed for years and mostly comprised of high-quality class 2 soils.

SCA is an “intervenor” in the PSC process on Chaberton Sugarloaf and Ramiere, together with MCA, MAP and MFB.

See here for information on an upcoming hearing on the Montvale project. And see here for information (from community opponents) on the Victoria project.

We welcome your comments and questions on this issue. They will help inform our advocacy. We’ll be updating this post as things evolve.

Montgomery County's Sole Source Aquifer - The Good Gift

“Our aquifer is the bloodstream for all farmers in the Agricultural Reserve. It’s what sustains us.” Gene Kingsbury, Kingsbury’s Orchard

This article is excerpted from the Spring 2024 issue of Plenty Magazine. We present the initial portion of the article. You may then link to Plenty’s website to read the remainder of the piece, and see the charts and photos that accompany it.

“Our aquifer is the bloodstream for all farmers in the Agricultural Reserve. It’s what sustains us.”
Gene Kingsbury, Kingsbury’s Orchard

More often than not, when asked, folks in the D.C. metro region do not really have a fix on where the water that flows from their faucets comes from. Sure, residents and businesses know that they pay mWashington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) for their water and sewage service, and they may know that the origin of their water is the mighty Potomac River. But as to the details—filtration plant operations, the infrastructure that delivers the water from plants to homes and businesses, what happens when there is prolonged drought, these bits are hardly known.

More mysterious to many is where roughly 25-30,000 homes, businesses and farm enterprises get their water from in the nearly one-third of Montgomery County that is wholly outside the WSSC service area by design. nd that if the story I aim to share in two parts.

Our Unfolding Food Emergency

This article is excerpted from the Autumn Harvest Season 2023 issue of Plenty Magazine. We present the initial portion of the article. You may then link to Plenty’s website to read the remainder of the piece, and see the charts and photos that accompany it.

The Montgomery County Council was uniquely visionary in 1980 when it protected 90,000 acres, nearly one-third of the county, for agricultural purposes. Now is the time to create more opportunities in the Agricultural Reserve for robust food production.

Stepping into a supermarket in 2020 or 2021 was a surreal experience—and wearing masks was only one reason. Empty shelves glared out at us. Where were the neatly shrink-wrapped packages of chicken? Why were there no eggs to be had? Peanut butter was in short supply, as were coffee and milk. There were many factors behind these shortages, but according to the Center for Strategic Studies, “The U.S. Food supply chain is highly efficient with low levels of redundancy, meaning that a small disruption in one part of the system can have cascading effects and cause food shipments to be delayed by days or weeks.”

Agriculture, SpotlightSugarloaf CitizensJanuary 3, 2024Plenty MagazineComment

Going Underground

“We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.” Leonardo Da Vinci

This article is excerpted from the Spring 2024 issue of Plenty Magazine. We present the initial portion of the article. You may then link to Plenty’s website to read the remainder of the piece, and see the charts and photos that accompany it.

Stand outside during the tail end of winter and the local landscape is quiet, a palette of soft grays and browns—dormant-seeming, except for the scurrying of squirrels or a line of honking geese overhead. Deciduous trees are largely bare, apart from oaks and beeches, whose dead leaves cling to them for most of winter—a strategy dubbed marcescence—but that’s another story. No new sprigs of green, no burst of floral colors. By early March, many of us are desperate for spring, overflowing with signs of its rebirth.

But just below our feet lies an entire world whose activity barely shows all winter, a vital realm brimming with as much life, if not more, than we can see in plain sight. In reality, there are more living organisms in the soil than all the other life forms above ground! When we aren’t disrupting their work, the nourishment they help liberate is ready the moment the soil warms enough to activate growth in plants and to awaken seeds. In fact, “Soil is alive. Much more than a prop to hold up your plants, healthy soil is a jungle of voracious creatures eating and pooping and reproducing their way toward glorious soil fertility,” says Kathy Merrifield, a retired Oregon State University scientist.

SCA Issues

“Our aquifer is the bloodstream for all farmers in the Agricultural Reserve. It’s what sustains us.” Gene Kingsbury, Kingsbury’s Orchard

“We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.” Leonardo Da Vinci