Gov. Abigail Spanberger has until April 13 to act on two bills that would override locally imposed bans on solar farms.
House Bill 711, sponsored by House Majority Leader Del. Charnielle Herring, D-Alexandria, passed the state Senate 22-18 on March 4, a month after passing the House 63-33 on Feb. 5. Its companion Senate Bill 347, sponsored by Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, passed the Senate 21-17 on Jan. 30 and passed the House with a substitute 63-35 on Feb. 16. The Senate agreed to the substitute 21-18 on Feb. 19.
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.
VACo Executive Director Dean Lynch, in a recent letter, urged Spanberger to veto both bills, stating VACo “supports maintaining local authority to address all impacts and all choices associated with utility-scale installations of solar power.”
VanValkenburg, in a Jan. 30 floor speech, described his bill as placing a “ban on bans.”
“This bill does not mandate one solar project,” VanValkenburg said. “As a matter of fact after this bill goes into effect every solar project in Virginia can be voted down. The localities have complete discretion over making the choice. What this bill is it says that they have to take the bills up one by one and the hope here is that by doing so we make this conversation a little less ideological, we make it a little more about the merits of individual projects, we look at what the property owner is requesting, we look at the economics of a project, we see if it makes sense. At the end of the day the localities can still say no. … and hopefully we do get a little bit more energy out of it because we do have energy needs in the commonwealth and solar is one part of that solution.”
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.
The bills would further require the SCC compile and maintain a searchable database of all solar project special exception decisions and the reasons for any denials over a five-year period. The bill would apply to any ground-mounted solar farm with a capacity of 1 megawatt or more for which an application for local approval is filed on or after July 1.
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.
Emmaline Herring, a legislative aide to VanValkenburg, told the Times the bills set “reasonable criteria for local solar ordinances so that localities at least have to consider these projects rather than dismissing them out of hand.”
Because the bills require 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 retain final decision-making authority, she said.
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, in February, told the Times Isle of Wight’s policy “is not a ‘blanket’ ban on solar farms,” noting the county has several solar projects that have been developed and are operational and others that have been approved but are not yet producing power. However, Joe Lerch, VACo director of local government policy, told the Times the proposed legislation would still impact percent-based policies like Isle of Wight’s.
Lynch’s letter to Spanberger cites a solar dashboard from the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center showing since 2013, Virginia localities have approved 397 utility-scale solar projects with a total of 16,996 megawatts of rated capacity, resulting in 77.8% of solar farm applications statewide being approved.
However, according to the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition, or MAREC, a multi-state coalition of solar, wind and battery storage developers, 23 counties, including Isle of Wight, have an effective ban on utility-scale solar or an ordinance that makes developing utility-scale solar “practically impossible.” Another 38 localities have highly restrictive ordinances that makes solar more difficult to develop.
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.

source