Two bills that would override locally imposed bans on solar farms recently passed their originating General Assembly chambers.
The bills’ sponsors say the legislation would still leave final decision-making authority with localities. However, the Virginia Association of Counties, which opposes the legislation, contends the bills would effectively invalidate percentage-based solar caps like those adopted by Isle of Wight and Surry counties.
Senate Bill 347, sponsored by state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, passed the Senate 21-17 on Jan. 30 and has advanced to the House of Delegates Committee on Counties, Cities and Towns.
Companion legislation House Bill 711, sponsored by House Majority Leader Del. Charnielle Herring, D-Alexandria, passed the House 63-33 on Feb. 5 and has been referred to the Senate Committee on Local Government.
Both bills would require that any solar facility proposed on agricultural-zoned land “shall be considered.” They would also set standards for local zoning approvals and require local governing bodies to provide the State Corporation Commission a record of special exception decisions within 60 days of a vote, including the reason for denial of an application and any finding of nonconformity with the locality’s comprehensive plan.
House Bill 711 passed the House 63-33. Dels. Nadarius Clark, D-Suffolk, who represents part of Isle of Wight County, and Kimberly Pope Adams, D-Petersburg, whose legislative district includes Surry County, each voted in favor of the bill. Del. Otto Wachsmann, R-Sussex, who also represents a portion of Isle of Wight County, voted against it.
Senate Bill 347 passed the Senate 21-17. State Sen. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg, whose legislative district includes Surry County, voted in favor of the Senate bill. State Sen. Emily Jordan, R-Isle of Wight, opposed it.
State Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell, and Del. James Leftwich Jr., R-Chesapeake, were the only Republicans in their respective chambers to join Democrats in approving the proposal.
State Sen. Russett Perry, D-Loudoun, was the only Democrat to side with Republicans against the Senate bill.
The bills come at the recommendation of Virginia’s Commission on Electric Utility Regulation, or CEUR, an advisory body of legislators and non-legislators formed in 2003 from legislation allowing the transition to retail competition among utilities like Dominion Energy and reactivated in 2023 to address rising statewide electricity demand.
“This bill simply sets reasonable criteria for local solar ordinances so that localities at least have to consider these projects rather than dismissing them out of hand,” Emmaline Herring, a legislative aide to VanValkenburg, told the Times. “Because this bill requires each project to receive a special use permit or siting agreement from the local government, the community still has the chance to weigh in and local governments would still retain final decision-making authority over individual solar projects. This gives them the ability to approve or deny the project, or negotiate a variance from the standards as a condition for approval. The project denials do have to be documented so community members have the opportunity to understand the justification for the denial. It's not true that these projects have to be approved. They just have to be considered.”
Isle of Wight, in 2023, enacted a 2% cap on the amount of the county’s prime farm soils, or a maximum of 2,446 acres, allowed to be devoted to solar farms, though its approval of the Sycamore Cross solar farm in 2024, which would span more than 2,000 acres, surpassed the self-imposed limit.
Surry County supervisors voted in 2025 to tighten its cap on solar farms to 7% of the countywide developable acreage, or 10,695 acres, down from a 10%, or 15,278-acre cap set in 2023.
Isle of Wight County Administrator Don Robertson said Isle of Wight’s policy “is not a ‘blanket’ ban on solar farms.”
“The county already has several solar projects that have been developed and are operational and others that have been approved but have not yet been developed,” Robertson said.
However, Joe Lerch, VACo director of local government policy, contends the proposed legislation would still impact percent-based policies like Isle of Wight’s.
“Once they’ve reached those limits in their ordinances this law says you still have to accept a special use permit application,” Lerch said, noting that even though all applications for special use permits would have to be considered, localities could still turn them down on a case-by-case basis.
As for whether Isle of Wight or Surry could legally vote down an individual solar project on grounds that it would exceed that locality’s percentage cap, Lerch pointed to the 60-day SCC notice requirement.
“I can only imagine that the purpose of all this is to collect a record by the SCC that the legislature could point to to say maybe we need to act further and take away the authority of localities to make these decisions at a local level,” Lerch said.
Any special exceptions granted for a solar project would be required to comply with criteria listed in the bills,including:
A 150- to 200-foot setback from the nearest adjacent dwelling.
A 50- to 100-foot setback from the edge of abutting roads.
A 50- to 100-foot setback from tidal or non tidal wetlands depending on whether generation capacity is below or above 25 megawatts.
A 50- to 75-foot setback from the nearest property line.
Vegetative screening between 25 to 50 feet in width with height not required to exceed 3 feet at planting.
The height of solar panels is not to exceed 25 feet at full tilt.
Compliance with all state stormwater regulations.
Wildlife corridors when needed.
A written decommissioning agreement.
“Where numerical ranges are attached to criteria, localities may choose to establish an ordinance that specifies any number within the applicable range that they deem appropriate for their community,” the bills state, further providing that “nothing in this section shall … require a locality to approve a special exception application considered.”
According to the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition, or MAREC, a multi-state coalition of solar, wind and battery storage developers, over 30 Virginia cities and counties, including Isle of Wight, have a ban on utility-scale solar or an ordinance that makes developing utility-scale solar “practically impossible.”
Lerch disputes that assertion.
“Localities are already approving solar to a large degree,” he said, pointing to a database maintained by the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center that lists 16,000 megawatts of solar projects approved statewide since 2013.
The database shows 12 approved solar projects in Isle of Wight totaling 560 megawatts and another two in Surry totaling 593 megawatts.
The Virginia Clean Economy Act, passed in 2020, mandates Dominion transition to 100% renewable energy by 2045 per a state-mandated schedule that includes petitioning the State Corporation Commission by the end of 2035 for approval to construct or acquire 16,100 megawatts of generating capacity from solar or offshore wind farms.

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