Counties cave to NIMBYism on solar products
Nearly all Maryland elected officials pronounce the urgency of acting on climate change and cutting global warming emissions. There are outliers or rather out-and-out-liars still denying global warming or human influence causing it.
One popular strategy employed by elected officials is to set goals for huge reductions in carbon emissions with future dates for carbon-free electrical generation and motor vehicle transportation. The goals are well past lawmakers’ current terms and sometimes beyond their current life expectancies. The hypocrisy is rife as local elected officials are blocking the installation of ground-based solar panels necessary to achieve emission reductions.
The Maryland legislature has enacted some of the most stringent goals to reduce and eventually eliminate carbon emissions. The Climate Solutions Now Act of 2022 mandated that the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) develop a strategy by the end of 2023 to reduce greenhouse emissions 60% by 2031. The law also required the new strategy to achieve net zero emissions by 2045.
MDE complied in late December by issuing Maryland’s Climate Pathway plan to meet the legislative mandate. It called for $1 billion in additional funding a year for seven years along with bold new policies.
Gov. Wes Moore embraced the plan and proposed funding it through a combination of green revenue bonds, a cap and invest program, a carbon fee, a hazardous substances fee, a clean air toll and a gas burning-vehicle pollution fee. An early test will be how much of the $1 billion in initiatives is appropriated this session and if any substantive initiatives to achieve the goals are enacted.
Since 2006, new federal Clean Air Act requirements for motor vehicle and power plant emissions, as well as the emergence of cheap natural gas from fracking, radically changed the fuel composition for electricity generation. Most of Maryland’s eight coal-fired electrical generation plants were shuttered or converted to natural gas that produces half as much GHG.
In 2006, 61% of Maryland electricity came from burning polluting coal, 28% from nuclear power at Calvert Cliffs and 4% from natural gas, 1% from oil, and 6% from renewables. In 2022, coal dropped to 12%, natural gas rose to 36%, nuclear to 39% and renewables to 12%.
Just three coal-fired Maryland plants remain, and all will stop burning coal by 2025, including two in Anne Arundel County. Paradoxically, Baltimore is the nation’s second-largest coal exporting port — 20% of U.S. coal exports.
Of the 12% renewables, just half came from solar and wind power. The rest came from the Conowingo Dam and biomass burning, including trash incineration. Maryland is far behind the national average of 14% from solar and wind.
Maryland law requires state utilities to procure 50% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Solar power must provide 14.5% of electricity sales by 2030. The law also requires offshore wind generation to reach 400 megawatts in 2026, increasing to 1,200 megawatts by 2030.
Despite the enactment of the 2013 Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act pushing the development of 500 MW of offshore wind capacity with $1.7 billion in subsidies, there are no offshore wind turbines. Current plans will not achieve this goal.
Despite proposals for projects 20 miles out in the ocean, NIMBYism (NIMBY is an acronym for “not in my back yard”), regulatory kerfuffles and costs have set back efforts for a decade. Recently, the wheels came off of one of the promising offshore wind energy plans. The only operating Maryland wind projects are on the Appalachian crest in western Maryland, where three projects with 56 turbines produce 190 MW of electricity.
NIMBYs fought hard to block these Maryland projects, including lawsuits, and have succeeded in blocking 17 new turbines on an old coal strip mine site at Dan’s Mountain after 13 years of planning. There are 73,352 operating turbines in wind farms in the U.S.
The new Maryland plan to reduce GHG and help stave off global warming has a major crack when it comes to clean electrical production. Maryland is not meeting nor on a path to meet its current renewable energy goals. The Pathway plan requires that solar and wind generation increase fivefold by 2031, with solar accounting for 33% of in-state generation. Solar is now at 5%.
The plan includes a prospective requirement that all electricity used in Maryland be generated by renewable sources by 2035. But Maryland is far from a path to achieving even the modest present solar target of 14.5% of electricity by 2031.
Making the solar goals almost impossible are organized efforts to block cost-effective solar ground installations. I am stunned at how NIMBYism and false narratives about protecting farmland and other lands are blocking the installation of solar projects.
Certain misguided citizens, including “conservationists,” have joined forces with the Farm Bureau to block farmers from placing money-making solar panels on their private farmland. What happened to property rights?
Nothing prevents a farmer with proper zoning from building a housing development or selling land for such or from building massive chicken houses with tons of manure needing disposal. But most counties have caved to vociferous opponents in all but banning solar installations on farmland and other private lands. Two million acres of land, 32% of Maryland, is agricultural. Blocking farm solar makes it nearly impossible to come close to climate goals.
Anne Arundel County law nearly eliminates solar power facilities on farmland and other open private lands. One restriction blocks all solar projects within 10 miles of another solar facility, 20 miles for larger utility scale facilities. The county executive tried to change the law, but a vociferous group convinced the county council to make the current restrictions even worse in an ordinance he signed into law.
Placement of solar panels on farms does not necessarily remove land from productive agricultural uses as farm owners benefit from using the electrical energy and by payments from solar generation.
This allows them to keep the land and use it under the panels for sheep or cattle grazing and for growing grass and hay. This helps keep farmers in business and from selling the land for development. Improved farm production under the solar arrays has been documented in Maryland and elsewhere. Maryland grants a pollinator-friendly designation to areas around solar arrays planted to attract pollinators.
Studies are used to delay, and then block, such solar power installations. There is absolutely nothing wrong with placing solar panels on farmland, which can substantially reduce pollutants from nutrients, sediment, and pesticides. And in most cases, only part of the farmer’s land is used for solar. To reach the solar power goal, as little as 0.4% with a maximum of 1.7% of all agricultural land would be used.
The new climate plan focuses on “how to stop digging the hole we are in by transitioning the state from the fossil fuel era to a renewable energy future.” NIMBYism and hypocrisy by local leaders are digging a deeper hole and defeating clean energy goals.
This has led to the formation of the Land & Liberty Coalition of Maryland, founded by conservative Republicans, one of whom worked for Gov. Larry Hogan. The state needs to adopt legislation prohibiting local governments from blocking solar and wind projects.