Updated April 15, 2025

Note: This is an interim update as we seek to more fully understand legislation state lawmakers passed on April 7. That legislation has major implications for the siting of ground-based (as opposed to rooftop) solar facilities on farmland in Maryland, including in Montgomery County’s 93,000-acre Agricultural Reserve. We testified on the bill and were involved in efforts to alter and improve it.

The new solar law

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

• Streamlining regulations for the assessment and approval of solar facilities

• Giving solar companies easier access to farmland—possibly around 120,000 acres throughout the state, and

• Preventing counties from denying permits for utility-scale solar projects.

The legislation directly pitted solar energy against farming and local control of land-use. In the end, its sponsors sought to strike a balance by limiting the amount of some farmland that could be put into solar (see below). Whether they succeeded or not will only become clear over time.

Opponents of the legislation have called it an unprecedented “land grab” by the state, one cloaked in the “green virtue” of expanding solar energy. (See this commentary, for example.)

Critics note that the new law includes significant state pre-emption of long-recognized local zoning laws and land-use policy—and that the legislation ignores the growing need to promote farming and food security at a local level amid the climate-change crisis.

SCA largely concurs with those assessments—even as we understand that state lawmakers were motivated by the desire to meet important renewable energy and climate-change mitigation targets set by state lawmakers over the past five years.

What was never fully clarified while the legislation was being debated and shaped was how much solar now exists in Maryland after several years of ambitious developments—on house and barn rooftops, over parking lots, and on open land and farms. Solar companies pressed hard for the legislation, in part, because big ground-based projects generate more profit.

The details

Like most legislation, the new law builds on existing law and practices. And the new law is quite complex.

Solar companies already had the right, for example, to solicit landowners/farmers for access to their land to build ground-based solar arrays. Indeed, such solicitations have flooded rural landowners’ mail boxes in the past five years. And the offers were often very generous—with proposals to lease farmland at prices 10 to 20 times what a landowner would be able to get from a contract farmer.

As a result, and not surprisingly, the number of landowners willing to carve out a part of their land for solar—usually 10 to 30 acres but sometimes up to 100 acres—has sharply increased in the past few years.

However, the approval process at the county and state level was cumbersome. The new law streamlines that regulatory process. And it blocks counties from denying approval for all but the smallest facilities as long as solar proposals meet the state’s new regs. Local jurisdictions are also required to expedite their review of even small-scale facilities.

Under the new law—which goes into effect July 1—solar projects larger than 2 megawatts (MW) just go through the state’s existing “certificate of public convenience and need” (CPCN) process, which is conducted by the state Public Service Commission (PSC). An explanation of megawatt power is presented in italics below.

Solar projects between 1 and 2 MW will continue to be reviewed primarily at the county level. But they must be approved as long as they conform to the new state regs.

[One megawatt (MW) of power is equivalent to one million watts or a thousand kilowatts (1,000 kW). On average, 1 MW of electricity can power around 1,000 homes. One MW of solar panels will generate around 2,150 megawatt hours (MWh) of solar energy per year. One MWh can power the average American home for 1.2 months or an electric car 3,600 miles.]

Landowners control the process on their private land, so the law in no way allows solar companies to seize farmland or pressure landowners into accepting their proposals. In practice, we expect more landowners will be attracted to the high land-lease fees solar companies offer.

The “compromise” on farmland

The compromise lawmakers struck was this: areas that a county has set aside and preserved for agriculture will have 95% of that land protected from solar development. (None of it was formally protected before under state law but many counties did protect such land from solar.)

Thus, that leaves 5% percent of the state’s protected ag land open for solar development (as long as a landowner wants to work with solar companies to create utility-scale solar facility).

Such protected ag lands in Maryland are called Priority Preservation Areas, or PPAs. Montgomery County’s 93,000-acre Ag Reserve is a PPA. All but four Maryland counties have PPAs. (PPAs do not include state or county parkland or other state- or county-owned land.)

Technically and legally, the new law caps the acreage that can be put in solar at 5% of any PPA. And, importantly, if the 5% cap is ever reached, control over solar permitting in a PPA area reverts to the County.

The law’s sponsors and supporters see the 5% cap as a big win for agriculture—spinning it as “95% protection.” But that’s not entirely accurate since most counties already had their own protections and rules governing solar in PPA areas. What the state did was to preempt those rules up to the 5% cap.

The Ag Reserve (AR) in Montgomery County is a well-known example of an area with such a restriction. The County Council enacted a 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—but only if those arrays were not sited on prime arable land (class I and II soils). Under this policy, solar arrays of up to 2MW were permitted as long as they met certain requirements and were approved by County regulators. The total acreage allowed for solar facilities in the Ag Reserve was 1,800 acres, which equates to about 2% of agricultural land in the County.

Indeed, most environmental and farm groups (including Montgomery Countryside Alliance and SCA) urged the 5% cap be reduced to 2% after the legislation’s sponsors admitted that the 5% cap was not based on any assessment of need. In fact, prior state estimates suggested that over the next 5 to 10 years around 45,000 to 50,000 acres of solar (not 100,000 or more acres) was all the open land and farmland needed for the state’s renewable energy needs. That would equate to 1.5% to 2% of PPA areas—since solar can also be built on non-PPA land.

In the Ag Reserve, based on data from the Maryland Department of Planning, PPA comprises around 103,000 acres. Five percent of that would be 5,150 acres. The Montgomery County Department of Agriculture is already working on an estimate of how much ground-based solar exists in the County and in the Ag Reserve. Montgomery County already has the second largest amount of solar energy production of all counties in the state.

There’s no official statewide count of solar projects—completed or currently being assessed. Several are in Montgomery County and in the Ag Reserve. SCA is an “intervenor” in a PSC process on two such projects proposed by Chaberton Solar, based in Rockville. SCA is joined in that proceeding by Montgomery Countryside Alliance, the Montgomery County Farm Bureau, and Montgomery Agricultural Producers. One is a 3MW project on approximately 11 acres in Dickerson. The other is a 4MW project on 16 acres near Poolesville. If approved, both would be built on fields that have been farmed for years and are mostly comprised of high-quality class 2 soils (and thus violate the 2021 Montgomery County zoning law). In addition, there’s a project proposed just outside of Barnesville that is not on Ag Reserve (and thus PPA) land.

SCA’s position

SCA agrees that a cap on solar in PPA areas is better than no cap—for now. We’ll see how that plays out. But characterizing the new law as a “big win” for the ag community is disingenuous.

Giving the state (via the PSC) almost complete control over where most solar facilities are sited, and stripping counties of any say, is inconsistent with decades of land-use, farm-oriented, and zoning public policy. As such, it sets a bad precedent not only on this issue but others. The bottom line is that counties are in a better position to regulate their own land—adhering to state environmental laws, etc.,—when it comes to balancing the need for housing, food production, commerce, and energy.

The new law’s sponsors argued vigorously that Maryland needs to generate more of its own energy—of all kinds: renewable, natural gas, nuclear, etc. But energy generation and distribution in the U.S. is shared among states with decisions about its allocation made by quasi-governmental authorities. In our area, that entity is called PJM Interconnection, LLC. PJM is responsible for operating the wholesale energy market in 13 states and DC, including Maryland. Some states produce more energy, some less.

April 10, 2025

Maryland lawmakers enacted legislation on April 7 ending Maryland’s classification of trash incineration as “renewable energy.”

It’s been considered that since 2011, as part of the state’s “renewable portfolio standard” program. As such, the energy generated in “waste-to-energy” (or “refuse-derived fuel) facilities, such as the one in Dickerson, was treated the same as energy produced by solar and wind facilities. That included subsidies to help promote renewable energy sources.

Thus, incinerators effectively took money out of the pockets of solar, wind and other clean energy companies—even as incinerators polluted the air and generated greenhouse gases. Since 2011, Maryland consumers have supported the Dickerson incinerator to the tune of around $30 million.

The new law is a huge win for environmental, civic and energy justice groups—includingSCA—which have been pushing this outcome for years.

Maryland is now the second state, after California, to delete trash incineration from its renewable energy portfolio.

“It’s about time,” said Lauren Greenberger, SCA’s vice president and main advocate on the issue. “It’s been such a ‘waste’ of money—pun intended—and has helped prop up the remaining incinerators in the state, which are too old, inefficient, and produce dirty energy.”

Added Jennifer Kunze, Maryland Program Director with Clean Water Action: “This action will help support the development of zero waste infrastructure by making it easier for composting, reuse and recycling, and other healthier solid waste management practices to compete without fighting uphill against state subsidies supporting the worst solid waste management option.”

Updated February 7, 2025

On Jan. 28, SCA shared its perspective on the County’s waste management plans at a briefing before the County Council.  At the invitation from the Council’s new president, Kate Stewart, we shared the floor with the County’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).  

It was a welcome opportunity to again state our opposition to the County Executive’s and DEP’s plan, announced on Nov. 25, 2024, to continue burning trash at the County’s incinerator in Dickerson for up to eight more years—rather than shutting the incinerator down in April 2026 as has been pledged for some years.

At the same time, we restated our strong support for DEP’s overall initiative to remake its waste management systems over the next decade.  That initiative includes enhanced recycling, an effort to compost all the county’s food scraps (commercial and home), a simultaneous roll out of unit pricing for residential trash (pay only for what you throw away), and new processes and technologies to reduce the amount of garbage currently being burned in the trash incinerator in Dickerson. 

On Nov. 25, County officials said they have authorized the Northeast Maryland Waste Disposal Authority (an entity that manages the County’s waste disposal) to extend for 5 years (from April 2026 to April 2031, and on an “emergency” basis) its contract with the private company Reworld (formerly known as Covanta), which operates the incinerator. 

The announcement states that the County has the “option for early termination” of the contract. A planning timeline on the county website indicates, however, that decommissioning would not begin until 2030 with full closure not until 2031 or even 2032.  DEP officials on Jan 28 affirmed that timeline to the Council. (SCA has not been granted access to the terms of the contract or the clause/section that would allow early termination.)  

County officials say the main reason for extending the contract is that trash incineration cannot be terminated until (a) waste reduction strategies, (b) technological enhancements and (c) alternatives means of trash disposal, such as landfilling are substantially built-out and fully implemented.  DEP claims that would take a minimum 5 years and more likely 6 to 7 years. 

At the Jan 28 Council briefing, Lauren Greenberger, SCA’s Vice President, presented an alternative path that could allow the incinerator to be shuttered in 3 years (by the end of 2027).  (See Lauren’s statement here.)  We recommend the following:

• Flesh out the County's contingency plan for incinerator closure. This would focus on immediate hauling of trash from Shady Grove to an acceptable landfill, and rolling out the infrastructure improvements as recommended by the County consultants over time.

• Make no major investments in the incinerator that will soon be decommissioned.

• Allow a one- to two-year contract extension and follow the timeline that Zero Waste Associates provided to meet all contractual and legal obligations to change from incineration to landfilling.

• Issue an RFP as soon as possible to identify potential contractors and the costs to long-haul from Shady Grove to specified acceptable landfills under long-term contracts.

• Set a firm date for closure that will allow the Dickerson Yard Trim Composting Facility to be expanded to receive food scraps quickly and in the most cost-effective manner.

In addition, and in tandem, set up a system over the next 3 years to:

• Aggressively pursue waste reduction through enhanced recycling, food scrap composting and a county-wide effort (with financial incentives) to compel citizens to recycle more and reduce what they throw away 

• Onboard new waste separation and recycling technologies on an emergency basis, with dedicated funding from the Council

• Modify, modernize and renovate the existing waste processing facilities in Derwood and Dickerson as needed, with dedicated funding from the Council

According to two reports commissioned by the County Executive in recent years, such an approach would be less harmful to human health and likely less costly over time. (See Beyond Incineration report here.)

According to those and other studies, incineration is more hazardous than landfilling as practiced today, even when the negative impact of trucking is taken into consideration.  In addition, the incinerator’s continued operation adversely affects a majority Black community in Virginia where 150,000 tons of toxic ash from the incinerator is dumped every year.  

November 15, 2024

This month, Montgomery County launched the latest phase of its initiative to reduce food waste by encouraging businesses and residents to compost instead of discarding food scraps in the trash. (See a short video later in this article.)

Food scraps account for about one-quarter of the county's total trash volume. In 2023, the county estimates that approximately 90,000 tons of food waste ended up in the trash, most of which was incinerated at the county's facility in Dickerson.

Composting food scraps is an environmentally beneficial practice (and thus, a no-brainer), but it requires significant changes in behavior for households and businesses, as well as adaptations to the county’s waste management systems. The county has been running a pilot composting program for several years and now plans to increase participation and enhance its infrastructure.

Part of this effort includes allowing residents to “recycle” food scraps at the curbside, just as they do with glass, plastic, paper, and cardboard. The collected scraps would be transported to a central location, likely the Dickerson yard trim compost facility.

Click “Read More” to go to the full article and watch a short YouTube video of the County’s recent ceremony on the composting initiative.

“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.

A class of toxic chemicals called PFAS can contaminate water, farmland, wells, and crops.  These chemicals have been linked to cancer and other diseases and do not break down in the environment.  An organization called PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) is leading an effort to probe whether PFAS chemicals are present—and if so, to what degree—on Ag Reserve land and in water sources.  

Testing to date has yielded concerning results. Levels of several forms of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances of which there are thousands) are substantially higher than EPA recommended quantities in drinking water in Poolesville. As a result, the town closed two of its 12 wells. These concerning results also led SCA and Montgomery Countryside Alliance (MCA) to join PEER in January in calling on Montgomery County officials to prohibit the use of certain PFAS-containing fertilizers, called biosolids, on county agricultural land—to prevent further contamination of ground and surface waters.  

January 5, 2024

“Agrivoltaics,” is a new buzzword in solar energy circles. The term applies to land used for agriculture (“agri”) and for generating solar energy (“voltaics”) by solar panels. Agrivoltaics can refer to just a few solar panels mounted on ground-based structures (as opposed to rooftops) or a whole field of them, with crops or animals grazing underneath.

A successful agrivoltaic project has some type of farming thriving adjacent to or under the panels, with the panels generating sufficient power to justify the economics of constructing and installing them. That can be a tall order—but not an impossible one. Agrivoltaics projects are very much in the research phase. The approach is not a fully proven yet, though it’s being viewed as workable under the right circumstances. For now, much of what’s known about agrivoltaics has come from research in dry areas in the western U.S. Some of these areas are sunnier and hotter than the Mid-Atlantic region in the summer and colder in the winter. Thus, agrivoltaic projects that are successful out west aren’t necessarily relevant to the Mid-Atlantic.

Other concerns and potential downsides are emerging. Ground solar panels can disturb and compact soil. They also decrease the amount of sun that reaches plants, affecting photosynthesis. And ground panels can adversely affect how much rain reaches plants and in what pattern. For example, run-off from panels can cause water to pool in some areas. Another practical concern is how farmers get equipment in and around ground panels. All these issues, and others, are being studied. 

Agrivoltaic proposals for the Ag Reserve

In 2020, Montgomery County adopted a zoning change that allowed solar arrays on land zoned for agriculture in Montgomery’s County’s Ag Reserve. The measure was a compromise. It recognized the need to generate more renewable energy in the county while at the same time preserving farming, especially on the county’s best soils. The measure also encouraged more production of rooftop solar. It increased the allowable amount of solar production for landowners from 120% of their personal use to 200%. That meant people could sell any excess solar electricity they generated back into the electricity grid. Community solar arrays, which are smaller than “utility scale” arrays, are also allowed under the measure. They can produce up to 2 megawatts of electricity, and generally require 10 to 12 acres of land. Importantly, placing solar arrays on farming soils designated class 1 or class 2 (high quality soils) is prohibited.