Planning Commission Work Session Meeting   2/28/2023

Welcome.

Oh, sure.

OK.

Chair, you should know if you've not been in this room before,

I'll take that as wisdom.

I'm going to start you off and then immediately get out of the way.

Albemarle County, the Board of Supervisors has funded a study, a consultant to help us develop regulations for commercial solar.

We have engaged the Berkeley group and we're working with Mike

and he's going to lead you in the presentation.

We have some questions at the end of the presentation.

We're not going to go through all of them, some key ones.

And if you have comments later on, thoughts, send them to us.

This is a work session.

We're going to be coming back to you at a later date for a public hearing.

So feel free to email us if you have any observations or comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Again, my name is Michael Zayner.

I'm the Director of Planning and Community Development with the Berkeley Group, and I can't take all of the blame for the memo, so my staff helped with that as well.

They couldn't be here today.

I was going to have an environmental planner with us.

questions and plenty of discussion today I think maybe will be about 30 minutes I hope for the presentation and we'll see where it goes and certainly opportunity for follow-up after the meeting you know through emails and then communication through bill to us so

But as you know, as Bill indicated, there's a growing interest in the development of solar facilities within the county.

And we've been engaged to assist the county in developing a better understanding of the land use issues, particular to solar energy and how those issues may be better addressed through regulations, permit review and procedures.

We'll be taking over a presentation on land use regulations for solar generation facilities with a focus on the county's current approach and thoughts that this commission and the county may wish to consider.

Looks like this is a good venue for that, so please do so.

And again, the memo that we provided you dated February 20th, generally the presentation will track with that memo.

There may be some items that we touch on maybe more in depth here versus in the memo and vice versa.

So if there's anything that you feel strongly about, have questions about, don't hesitate to jump in and ask.

And some of the presentation will include background, a lot of background information that many of you may already be aware of given your experiences and other research that you've done.

But as a public process, we want to make sure the presentation is as comprehensive for everyone that may be in attendance and watching.

And make sure I don't get crossed up.

on computers that I'm looking at.

So just an overview of the session, we'll talk about the Berkeley group and I think you all are familiar with us given your past experience, but I'll talk more so about our role with Solr.

We'll give you a general overview of national and state context, also touch on the county's experiences.

and we'll discuss regulatory considerations and potential impacts.

Really the issues that we think are at the forefront should be at the forefront of your mind when you think about solar regulation and then we'll touch on the county's existing regulations and then discuss regulatory best practices and then at the end hopefully we have a really good discussion and you can give us some input and feedback.

So the goals for the session, again, we're hoping or we understand you're seeking a better understanding of the issues particular to solar energy.

Really is your favorite.

Let's see.

Awesome.

All right.

There we go.

So the goals of this identify aspects of solar facility development or regulatory topics where the commission needs additional information, understand commission perspectives with regard to principal opportunities or areas of concern, potentially resulting from the development of solar, and then seek input from you all on potential regulatory provisions.

And we provided a list of 12 questions.

Those are really a list of questions that have generated from our work, our similar work with localities.

I would tell you, we don't have to answer any of them specifically, but we hope that they're a good resource to prompt discussion.

Some of them may be paramount to you.

There may be of critical importance to your consideration.

Other ones, such as what zoning district, those may be

So a little bit about us.

and you all know a lot about us, I think, but again, I'm the Director of Planning and Community Development and our team working on this, two environmental planners, Lindsay Edwards and Luke Peters, and then our intern Nadia Ciazza.

Darren Coffey, our principal, has also assisted with this in meeting with Bill, discussing it with Bill and staff, and also helping us prepare materials for you all.

I think, again, you all know a lot about us, maybe less so about our solar work.

But really this started when Darren was working with Mecklenburg County some years ago.

And the result of that, the experience of that was his development of an American Planning Association, what they call Planning Advisory Services memo on planning for utility scale solar facilities.

and out of that and also working with a number of clients coming out of that local governments.

He also and myself, there was a joint solar at scale guide recently developed in the last few years by APA and ICMA.

That was through a U.S.

Department of Energy grant.

And Darren served on as a peer reviewer of that material.

And he and I have both served as presenters for that, certain modules for that education webinars.

So all of that, I'm not sure the total number of localities that we work with on solar, developing policies, developing regulations, but also peer review, third party reviewer of projects.

I can tell you today, in addition to Albemarle County, we work with eight localities, seven in Virginia and one in Colorado.

and I was talking earlier, one of those localities we are working on both solar and wind as well.

And we also are working to review a wind project in Virginia.

So a lot of experience on the renewable side and hopefully that translates to what we're going to talk about.

So with that,

As I think you all recognize, when we're discussing utility scale solar, we're generally talking about a facility that is intended for commercial production of electricity, for distribution to the electrical grid.

And generally, we define these as medium scale and large scale, medium scale one megawatt to five megawatts, and large scale five megawatts and greater.

And for a good rule of thumb,

and this does vary in practice, but a good rule of thumb is that it requires 10 acres of land for one megawatt this generation to pass.

Some will cite research that looks at a lower number, six to seven acres of land, but usually the higher the number or usually the more variation in topography, the higher the number is going to be.

Just as you can imagine, due to the sheer

land development needs and impacts.

While not a focus of this accessory solar, so integrated into a residence net meter, integrated into business, that's not a focus of what we're talking about here.

But it's important that what we're doing doesn't preclude those options, presuming that's something that the county wishes to encourage.

So

What are solar facility components?

Of course you have the panels themselves and the racking.

And generally we're talking about ground mounted again.

Some of these racking systems they do auto tilt to get the best

Solar, sorry I lost my train of thought, but to capture the best sunlight on the panels.

We have inverters that convert DC to AC and then you have the substation and switch yard and generator lead or gen tie lines that interconnect to the grid transmission lines.

and what we're also seeing more and more of our battery energy storage developed in conjunction with solar to really store that produced power and release it into the grid at the best available time and that's becoming again more and more common and of course fencing for security and safety not just around substations but also around the panels and those installations themselves.

So is there a building associated with any of that?

Sometimes there's a maintenance building.

Sometimes battery storage is housed in what could be a building.

A lot of the time, battery storage is housed in trailers, what look like trailers, prefab trailers.

But most often, there's really no buildings beyond a basic maintenance shed of something of that type.

So with that kind of context of what we're talking about, national context nationwide, we're seeing a large growth in renewables and especially solar.

And solar is the fastest growing energy source in the world.

And since 2010, the United States has seen a dramatic increase going from two gigawatts in 2010 to approximately 130 gigawatts of installed solar at the end of the first half of 2022.

And to help with the math, one gigawatt equals 1000 megawatts.

So we, the increase of solar is due to several factors decrease in cost of equipment, dramatic, dramatic decrease since 2010 about an 80% decrease in cost.

There's a growing demand for renewably generated energy from the private sector, a lot of fortune 500 companies and the like.

Instability in the availability and costs of fossil fuels due to geopolitical conditions, state policies and incentives, and this is especially true in Virginia, and economic and financial opportunity for landowners, especially farmers and communities in general.

So the context within the state of Virginia.

Similar to the growth nationally, solar has grown in Virginia in the last decade with an installed solar capacity increasing from 17 megawatts in 2014 to 3,845 megawatts in 2022.

and Virginia is popular for solar from a geographic and climate perspective but also from a policy and regulatory perspective.

In 2018, the state's energy plan called for targets of 3000 megawatts of solar and onshore wind capacity to be deployed by 2022 and 5500 megawatts by 2028.

and in 2020 the Clean Energy Act was adopted requiring Dominion Energy and American Electric Power also known as Appalachian Power to the state's two principal utilities to produce 100% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2045 and 2050 respectively.

and the two images here are from a Virginia solar survey done by Virginia Department of Energy and UVA.

The image at the top shows the location of active facilities of five megawatts and greater located throughout the state as of December, 2021, as well as the table on the bottom shows the annual growth and generation capacity since 2015, which the numbers I referenced earlier and referenced on the slide has been a huge increase since 2014.

Quick question.

There's a lot of consistent developers within the state, but we do see new and new, newer and newer, and we do see out-of-state and national entities coming in as well.

There's a few that are based here in Charlottesville that we see that are quite active.

Yeah, I would tell you, yes, it probably is growing.

Yeah, it would be interesting.

Yeah.

I have one other question.

Sure.

Yeah, that I don't have off the top of my head, but

I'm trying to think if we have a slide in here.

But if you give me a second while we're talking, I can give you that benchmark.

So let's see.

So the experience with the county, it's my understanding there's been three projects permitted so far, one pending review.

and certainly there may be others that are lining up.

And I would tell you this, most often what we see is that the locality is usually the last to know about a potential project.

Usually these companies are working with landowners, lining up lease agreements, and then all of a sudden there's a project that's before you of hundreds or thousands of acres and that's fairly common.

whether they're the principal contractor or they're subbing or they're otherwise representing or represented by a developer.

Most often, the sizable utility scale projects, they eventually, I don't know that this is 100% accurate, true, but many of those projects are sold to Dominion.

You know, we don't see, at least from our role, we don't see a lot of co-op scale projects.

The co-ops are not subject to the same 100 percent renewable transition that Dominion and Appalachian or AEP are.

So that, I believe, has some effect on it.

And I think there the co-ops are a little

They lag behind, I would say, a little bit in that transition.

I was going to mention, too, to Chair Clayburn's question about the scale.

I know someone in here is going to know the answer.

I think Hexagon provided something like 25% of the county's total needs.

And it's an interesting point that you bring up.

For the most part, all of the energy generated by utility scales going into the transmission line infrastructure.

So it's technically impossible to say it's being utilized locally.

Sure.

There is some physics involved with that, I would say, and that I think you could equate it to being used locally, but you can't really confirm that.

Whereas co-ops, oftentimes they are able to say that the energy that they're producing locally is staying local.

So, the matrix that we're looking at there, so pretty much every single one of those is averaging more than 10 acres per

Probably, yeah.

And we haven't dove into the details of any one of these projects, but I can tell you that the majority of the localities that we work with, it's hilly terrain, but it's not as variable as it is in Albemarle County.

So it's quite possible that you're seeing a higher average than we would normally expect.

Yeah, it would be interesting to look at that one and really the reason why.

This fenced area was much smaller than that.

And there was also, if we'll remember, that there was a

Well, and also when you get into things like agro-voltage, where someone may be leasing a portion of a larger farm property, do you look at the leased area?

Do you look at the fenced area?

Do you look at the size of the lot?

It's a rule of thumb, but it's not a rule and a lot of variation.

But if they had significant stream buffers,

They also had buffers around the edge of the site to screen it.

And then in addition to that, they also provided adequate space for stormwater ponds and space to get in and maintain them.

Yeah, and that's certainly part of the process that we would recommend that some of these

So again, we believe that solar is a utility scale.

It's an intensive land use.

It's a unique land use.

And ideally, these are located on former industrial land or brownfields, but more often than not due to land demands and availability and costs.

They're located on undeveloped land, agricultural or forested land or previously timbered land is what we commonly see.

because of their uniqueness, because of their intensity and development.

We do believe they require unique regulatory considerations based on identified best practices and the specific goals and areas of concerns of the county.

So, kind of to jump in, in terms of

the land use impact.

So obviously a change in land use where you have a formerly rural area or parcel that may have been actively ag, you know, under agricultural use or forested or timber.

That's commonly what we're seeing.

And in some cases, depending on the community, there could be competing, that land use could be competing for residential development, for industrial development,

But again, there's also financial considerations at play.

And usually we're seeing that lands dedicated to this use have less development potential for other uses, that solar is the highest and best use, but that also presumes that there's a lower value per acre involved.

So some of the impacts, infrastructure impacts, environmental impacts, visual concerns, impacts to roadways and traffic safety during construction.

A lot of the projects that we've reviewed, not all of them, but a lot of them in rural areas, smaller roads that are barely two lanes.

Some projects, a significant number of curb cuts for construction.

You have delivery of materials.

You have large trucks traveling these roads.

It's important consideration.

Reduction of wildlife mobility due to fencing of pods of panels.

Alteration of existing topography through grading, impacts to soil conditions due to removal of topsoil and compaction during development.

Erosion and sedimentation and stormwater runoff issues during the development phases as well as when the facility is in full operation.

And then removal of existing forested areas and then impacts to agricultural soils.

Again, compaction but also potentially zinc leaching which can affect some crops in the future.

Visual impacts are also a point of concern.

Preserving the rural care driven area, scenic view sheds principally, those are a lot of the concerns that people share.

Agricultural impacts against soil compaction, removal of topsoil, the fact that this use is gonna occupy a large land area for 30, 40 years,

that may impact the ability to use that property for agricultural purposes after the fact due to primarily to soil impacts.

And then alteration of site topography that may impact stormwater flow and water infiltration.

um another consideration is is that there's an option potential option for agrivoltaics which is the combination the integration of solar generation with agricultural uses um and we we do see that in a lot of localities they don't necessarily specifically call it that um but in a lot of cases what we see is someone wants to lease a portion of their farmland

to be developed for solar.

It just so happens that they're going to actively farm the remaining portion as they have for years.

So one potential conflict that I see with the inclusion of agriculture is that we have a lot of exclusions typically for agriculture.

For example, we don't require stream buffers for agriculture.

We don't require we exempt them from a lot of our regulations.

So when you can when you layer those two uses on top of one another, agriculture

and in industrial use, I think it really needs to be settled, which is the primary use and which one is going to govern what you're going to require in terms of buffers and not a protection.

Yeah.

Is that a buffer requirement?

Yeah.

I think it's good to answer the question because a lot of localities, and I'm not certain about this for Albemarle County, their ordinances are set up where you have one

Very few are allowing for two principal uses.

Most of the time this becomes industrial.

Most of these are purely industrial.

You can't really have much agriculture.

In terms of the use or the zoning?

Right, we let them by special use permit.

Correct.

Most communities

are not changing zoning when solar projects come through.

They're usually allowed in industrial but we don't see a lot of projects in industrial zone property.

Most often it's rural residential or agricultural zoning that you're going to see this in and communities kind of acknowledge that in their policies where this is viewed as more of an industrial use but yet because of land demands and

destroy a site that was well known to natural heritage.

There was a state endangered site with a long, long list of state imperiled and threatened species.

And so what are you seeing in terms of people?

I mean, DCR has a nice database out there that has a list of all their state rare species.

What are you seeing in terms of localities actually using that data to

So I can only speak for our advisement of our clients, and I can tell you that we look at that database and several others, but we look at that database when we're reviewing a project and developing a staff report or developing recommendations for a locality.

You know, ultimately, whether that bubbles up as a

primary concern for the elected body, the Planning Commission, it's really, you know, up to the individual locality but we do reference it.

I would tell you, I've not seen this but it's quite possible.

that you could potentially institute that as a finding for a permit where, and we'll talk about that a little bit with respect to some of the recommendations, but you could have a situation where you don't have a subjective regulation, but more objective findings and something like that isn't, you know,

Are there endangered species listed or is it a valued natural resource and based on the certain guidance and have that be a qualification or consideration for a permit?

So there's a way to institute that.

and most recently I saw that from a locality with respect to prime ag soils in terms of they actually set as a finding for prime ag soils that if a site had less than 10% of prime ag soils.

The limitation on development of that could be waived through the conditional use or special use permit process.

Whereas if it had more than 10%, it essentially mandated through a finding that that land, that percent above 10% had to be excluded from the project.

Stormwater management.

This is a principal current concern during development but again during operations you can probably Google this with respect to solar facilities in the state and probably find news articles with concerns about projects that have occurred throughout the state.

Panels create a semi permeable cover.

Soil compaction creates infiltration coefficients similar to concrete.

Stormwater and sediment basins, they are instituted in most projects that we see, but they need to be well planned.

We encourage the retention of existing vegetation, enhancing setbacks from wetlands, restricting total development until a site or soil is stabilized, and in some cases, what we see and see

limits on developing more than 100 acres or 500 acres at a time before stabilization.

Great question about that.

Yeah, that's included as part of our best practice regulations.

Absolutely.

Let's see.

So decommissioning is also important.

The state code mandates that, whether it's in your regulations or in your permit or in your siting agreement, that decommissioning be addressed, really to cover the cost of decommissioning that facility at the end of its lifespan, 30, 40 years, addressing how you're decommissioning it, the disposal impacts, how you're disposing of equipment,

Usually what we are suggesting is that in your regulations you spell out what's going to be required for a decommissioning plan, cost estimates.

Usually what we're suggesting is that they would be reevaluated every five years throughout the lifespan of the project, that there be a bond or other type of security put in place.

So a whole laundry list of requirements for decommissioning.

And then one thing that we know was important to you all is some thoughts about potential contamination.

And to be clear, this is not our area of expertise.

We are land use planners.

We know that

Panels contain hazardous materials.

We understand that the biggest opportunity for those materials to be instituted in the environment is when you have a damaged panel.

And so there is on the maintenance side, if there's panels that are damaged, that they are not stockpiled on site, that they're removed within a timely period, those are some of the things that we were suggesting.

Also battery energy storage systems.

lithium-based batteries, concerns with fires principally.

Usually we're recommending and there are concerns for explosion on these, so I don't know whether that's something that you all are interested in or not in terms of allowing for battery energy storage systems.

but we do recommend that there be frequent and ongoing training for fire and EMS personnel.

Again, that's something that you can look into in terms of news articles with explosions and injured personnel and the like.

So it's really making sure that we're all aware, especially fire and EMS, how to put those fires out, making sure that the system is designed well, that they have suppression,

I incorporated within them and there are codes addressing that.

But again, it's something that kind of built in suspenders to make sure there is not an issue.

And I mentioned before, zinc is really, in terms of leaching from a constructed site, really we only understand that there's a potential for zinc leaching into the ground from steel posts.

We understand that over the lifetime of a project that the only potential impact that could possibly have is on the growing successful ability to grow peanuts.

Beyond that, we're not aware, but that doesn't mean that there's not some research out there on this.

I can tell you that one of our clients that we worked with a locality in Kansas did have

a researcher and academic come to talk to them about this concern and he expressed no concern.

Is that definitive?

No.

And that's anecdotal for me.

So if that's a point of concern, potentially we can provide and seek out some more resources.

Is there any greater risk with this use of steel than with a building or not?

But again, if it's something that is of concern to you, we can attempt to do additional research.

We can attempt to plug in someone that may be more knowledgeable than we are.

So I think lastly, in terms of impacts, economic impacts, administration impacts, obviously it's an income source.

It's an income source in terms of tax revenue, potential payments, depending if you do a siting agreement.

It's really, from a tax standpoint,

You can pursue it as an M&T tax or do it as a revenue share.

UVA has a handy calculator for determining which one is preferable there.

There's also, again, the potential to enter into siting agreements with developers and potential additional payments involved there to offset impacts of the project.

So that is a whole separate maybe discussion, but something that's important to discuss.

I would also say in the administration of these, and this may or may not be more relevant to Albemarle County, but it is certainly more relevant to some of the smaller localities that we work with.

We're talking about sizable development projects and those projects can significantly impact administrative staff and operations inspectors, et cetera.

So that can present a challenge and it's certainly something to take into account.

and even not just at the local level but even at the state level too with DEQ inspections of sites.

So existing regulations for the county.

Currently you define the use solar energy systems and you allow

in specific zoning districts.

What we recommend is that there be clearly defined regulations and standards that those create consistency across projects, and they provide for predictability, which benefits the community, developers, and the public.

Sorry, just a quick question.

Could you remind us which of the districts solar is allowed by special use permit within?

So jumping into our best practices, and most of these touch on the issues that we talked about, but really, again, defining the use.

These are general application procedures.

So defining use, determining the zoning district, establishing procedures and minimum application content.

We talked about

like a maintenance plan, at least referencing that in their application material.

But usually, you have your standard requirements for a conditional or special use permit application.

Often, we are recommending that there be specific application requirements, the decommissioning plan or a draft of the decommissioning plan, stormwater plan, a preliminary stormwater plan, grading plans, preliminary grading plans.

We're going to require those.

and then again decisions on whether or not the county wishes to enter into and pursue siting agreements and revenue share.

Let me step back.

Usually we recommend two steps in a process.

2232 review, which is 15.2 2232 of the state code, which is determining whether or not a utility project is in accordance with the comprehensive plan for our community.

Usually we recommend that that be a separate process before the planning commission.

More to increase transparency around projects that can be cited.

Oftentimes, and I think how you all have been proceeding is that those reviews are really combined within the consideration of the special use permits.

And that's perfectly fine too.

I think there's rationale to do it either way.

Again, our recommendation is that

If you separate the process it just gives the public more time to digest and understand what can be a significant project.

So, minimum development standards and these are lengthy I think they cover two slides.

Do you wish to set, for instance, minimum and or maximum area facilities or rated capacities?

Some communities will say throughout the entire county there shall be no more than this many acres devoted to utility scale solar or no single project can exceed this many acres or megawatts.

Maximum lot site coverage and or minimum percentage of open space.

Minimum distances from towns or cities, they'll create a buffer mile to from towns or even communities, villages that are not incorporated.

Minimum distance from other facilities, so separation between facilities.

Minimum distances from identified natural, historic, cultural, or similar resources.

And I would say not a lot of communities that we work with have definitive historic or cultural resources where they say, you know, this place is so important in the community and we don't want to negatively impact the aesthetics of that environment.

But that's quite possibly an option.

Street and property line setbacks specific to the use.

And I would say, in some cases, and you can look at this, you could say, here's the specific setback from a property line, from a street right-of-way, you could vary that.

There could be scenic roads that you want to increase setback.

There could be instances where you say, here's the minimum setback from a property line.

But in any case, the fenced active panels need to be located a certain distance from occupied residents.

So there's a lot of variability in terms of how you think about that.

Maximum height, usually what you'll see in most every ordinance that we've not been involved in is a height limit, 15 feet, 20 feet, 25 feet, what have you.

What we also recommend is that there be a maximum height for the lowest edge of the panel to avoid erosion issues from stormwater sheeting off the panel.

There's research that has been done that shows that if that lowest edge is any higher than 10 feet, then that could cause additional runoff and erosion.

That's a good question on this.

So it strikes me that these are also site dependent, right?

Not all, but most of them are.

For most of these, no.

But some of them, yes, like the distances from towns.

There's some communities that say,

Or they've said our maximum density within that five mile radius is 3%, but that can be waived by the Board of Supervisors in their decision.

Got it.

But again, with any time you're doing that, you're reducing the predictability of the outcomes, right?

So.

Yeah.

I mean, our basic recommendation is they not be developed that they're that they be avoided, without a doubt.

And on this plan too, you can see here, this water body went through here.

And I'm not certain if this is floodplain, all of it, but you can see where they didn't develop through this area.

that pink, black dotted line that now it's a wildlife blockage.

Well, so this one I'm trying to recall exactly, but this is probably fenced here.

The pink is definitely not fenced, I'll tell you that.

The fencing probably, this is a wildlife corridor, I would tell you through here, but to the earlier point, all of these stars are access points.

So, you know, this image up here shows you a lot without me telling you a lot about it, but you know there's a lot of information up there that we've gone over.

Landscape buffers and screening, landscaping and ground cover, native non-invasive, fencing and security measures, wildlife corridors.

These are, again, all things that we suggest be incorporated in some fashion within ordinances.

Lighting requirements, signage requirements, noise requirements in a lot of ways.

That's a good question.

When you're talking about the option to say like distance from a property line versus distance to the nearest dwelling, we've certainly had situations with projects where we've given an exception because even though they're moving closer to the property line, they're just moving closer to a cow.

They're not irritating a homeowner.

And in other cases, we look at where the nearest dwelling is.

So I'm just wondering, what about the case where we say, well, it's just next to a farm field,

So it's, you know, we'll waive that or we'll let it be closer, but then somebody comes and builds their dream house there.

Well, I mean, generally these are not noise producing things.

Yeah.

I don't know.

You would be surprised if people were like, how dare there be a cell tower near my house?

One of the big things I've heard about at other sites, which inclines me to say we should have a buffer around the edge, is there's been cases of sediment flowing off the solar facility onto neighboring parcels.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's definitely a value to them, not just visibility, but that impact.

Addressing transmission lines and other support infrastructure, what else is going to be installed as part of this facility?

Potential groundwater monitoring requirements, coordination with local emergency services, i.e., not just for access to the facility, but also in case if there is battery storage training associated with that, and then

Sorry, I wasn't reading from the right slide.

And then maintenance, you know, making sure that landscaping and buffers are maintained, making sure that installed equipment is maintained.

addressing construction mitigation, phasing, timeline, staging, storage, transportation routes, et cetera, decommissioning, again, establishing as part of the community's ordinance.

I would tell you for all of those things, you could address them through conditions.

But again, I think what are the things that are critically important to the county that you want to establish baseline

requirements for.

There may be things that you want to allow some flexibility and how do you institute that flexibility.

A question related to standards, conditions, limitations, all those kinds of things.

So what you're going through is mostly that, right?

It's like, how do you control this?

Have you found like there's a there's a county and I would hope our county is like this that is committed to sustainability.

and we have a climate action plan and that's potentially hopefully going to grow and be more robust.

Have you had or seen opportunities where the developers of these facilities are brought in and said, what can we do to help you?

Yeah, I think

Almost across the board, I think, regardless of what you're talking about, that proactive effort I think can lead to better outcomes, better projects.

And no, I would tell you, we've not worked with a lot of localities or currently that are proceeding in that manner.

It would certainly be encouraging.

And I would tell you, perhaps there's conversations to be had with Dominion.

or the co-ops.

I think from a climate action plan standpoint, if you're really looking to reduce the local impact, then potentially the co-ops may have the best immediate impact on that.

So that could be an opportunity there.

Not to say that Dominion would not be able to, but just the nature of their operation and how that generated electricity is flowing.

It's not generally directly beneficial as a produced electricity.

So I'm at the end.

Again, these next slides are the questions that we gave you.

I don't have to go through these.

I'm happy to go through them, but I don't have to.

There were 12 questions.

Some of them may be of more importance to you all than others.

So one of the big challenges that I see is that currently our rural area

I want to go back to that.

When you look at our comprehensive plan and you look at the growth areas, they're this mosaic of beautiful different colors.

When you look at the rural area, it's all one color.

We basically treat the RA as all the same.

And I see that as a big problem with our comprehensive plans that we're treating the rural areas if it is all the same.

While we have done some great research on looking at areas of high ecological integrity, of large forest blocks,

There are areas of prime agricultural soils, areas that we know they're at land use valuation or under forestal districts.

So in practice, the rural area is not all the same.

And it seems to me that the best thing to do would be to actually differentiate some of those areas and our comprehensive environment.

Maybe even have explicit agricultural zoning, as many localities do.

And then have areas that we may even

even considered explicitly designating areas where solar makes sense.

In addition, you know, the climate action plan comes up a whole lot.

It's worth noting we do have a biodiversity action plan as well.

And so just looking at some past correspondence from DCR, they usually require

They usually recommend a buffer of 250 meters around any of their special national heritage resources.

So I would recommend that as a starting point, that be something of the county.

It's also worth noting that there are also locally designated special sites by the Natural Heritage Committee that looks at places natural communities of significance to the county.

And we should also consider those as we look at these approvals.

The other thing that occurs to me in terms of wetlands, there's National Wetlands Database.

I hope people refer to it.

Currently, the way that our water protection ordinance is structured, we don't require buffers around wetlands unless they're directly hydrologically connected to a river stream.

I would recommend that we consider including buffers around any wetland, not just those that are hydrologically connected.

Yeah, often we do see

We do suggest a hundred foot buffer from wetlands and water bodies.

Sometimes an applicant will offer that as part of their application.

Other times it will be recommended as a condition by us.

So yeah, I'll just tag onto that.

So he was referring to the biodiversity action plan as part of that.

There's a map of forest blocks, but there's basically large habitat cores that have already been evaluated for the county, looking at soil diversity, looking at prevalence of wetlands and

other water features such as streams, looking at whether there's RTE species in there.

And they've already been ranked.

So that's something unique that you may be familiar with.

This is basically the Virginia Natural Landscape Assessment, the vanilla model that PCR created.

And we find it at a one meter scale.

So ours is more precise, although it hasn't been updated in several years.

But nevertheless, it would actually not be that hard to update that map.

but I think we need to maybe write something a little more unique than what we may be used to in terms of protecting access between those or not obliterating them.

I drew a simple cartoon that shows solar site obliterating, solar site not obliterating ways to fit panels within just as a cartoon for some of my solar developer friends but I think we could actually write some pretty specific

standards that would still allow for solar development but would not allow it to ignore some of the special resources that Albemarle County has taken the time to document.

I also support having a buffer from streams and wetlands as well as along the roadside.

So a lot of times buffers are too narrow when they're less than 100 feet and if you take a forest and you cut it

you cut it down and you leave a thin strip of trees the wind gets in there and then you see everyone's complaining in Albemarle all the time about sites where trees are falling in the road they're either they're falling in the road now it's because there's nothing within that wind that's ripping across so the other thing is steep slopes you know you mentioned that in your presentation the pictures you showed I'm not faulting it anyway but they were all flat sites

and we have a lesser steep slope standard for rural areas.

So, in terms of that question of whether it's an agricultural site or solar site, I think it needs to be considered a solar site.

Yeah, usually for steep slopes, it's our recommendation whether it be part of the

In this case, where we have a critical slope ordinance, we have a delineated critical slope map in the GIS.

Well, we have two standards.

One is managed, and one is preserved.

The rural area has one standard.

And we don't have a lot of preponderance or flat land around here, especially anything near the development ring.

We have all this analysis we do about whether we have any land for industrial or heavy commercial, and we keep coming up short.

And so if we were to fill a site like that with solar panels, might be shooting ourselves in the foot in terms of other, because you were talking about highest and best use.

I'll just make one more quick point.

There also is a difference in what kind of land cover is being cleared.

All right, so you mentioned prime ag soils.

Can't speak today.

But there's also differences in forest type.

So for example, I have more heartburn about immature hardwood forests being proposed to be cleared for solar panels than they would a pine forest where the pine rotation is about 20 years.

Hardwoods are more like 100 years.

They have a thick doff layer and providing a lot more wildlife habitat.

The reason that it was in support of that last project we had down near Scottsville in Supervisor Price's district is because that site was actually heavily impacted.

And I felt like the solar, that particular solar company, not all solar companies, but the one in question is going to actually do more to restore the soil and the habitat.

And there's a lot of big erosion gullies.

I mean, so the site was in bad shape.

So I saw it as an improvement.

in that case.

But in general, I know that the Virginia Department of Forestry has a lot of concerns with losing timber sites to solar.

So I guess it would depend.

So I feel like in the language, you should have something about hardwood, the discouraging clearing of uncleared land for solar, a forest, and then with a much stricter standard or prohibition against hardwoods.

Maybe that's not possible.

And I think there needs to be like a buffer there, too.

You don't want to create a situation where someone clears the land under one guise of agriculture and then turns right back around, then puts in their solar application.

Right.

Somebody could.

Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know.

Some communities have had waiting periods.

We did have a situation on the James River near where I live where somebody said they were doing forestry.

and they cut down trees in the buffer, hardwood trees, left them to rot and then applied for a campground.

Now that was what I called faux forestry.

It was even worse than actually at least doing something with the trees.

I have a couple of thoughts.

So for me, there's like the macro discussion and then there's the micro discussion, right?

So the macro big picture thoughts,

For, and I don't know, I'm not going to, none of this will be resolved, but you know if we, we have farmland in the rural area and to the question of do you limit the amount, scale, the size within a county

So that's one kind of the big picture.

I think to echo what is also being said, just the sites in general in terms of

What is this current standard, the current status of the site and whether or not that should be

if it's already degraded, does that get a higher potential opportunity for solar?

How do we look at that?

Right.

The other is one that I mentioned before when I was thinking about the climate action plan and just thinking about the county's overall goals, still thinking

I feel like there is a goal, or there needs to be a goal, that we then strive towards.

So UVA has goals for carbon reduction versus zero carbon, etc.

I think if we can tie the strategy of solar and other sustainable developments,

to something that is actually a goal that'll help guide these documents as opposed to that to me feels like the right way to come about this as opposed to coming end around saying well you can't do this you can't do this you need buffers you need this not saying that that's wrong

about a goal and sustain that.

The first few questions up there talking about the zoning districts where solar should be allowed, this was a real life example that we dealt with where we had a large area of property that was zoned R1.

And we wanted, it was not, and this is probably not common, but we didn't want to develop it.

We don't foresee developing it in quite a while.

It's an abandoned golf course area.

and we wanted to put solar on it, but because it's R1, we could only go half acre.

So I think as you think about, as we think about how to go about this in other areas, we should somehow think about, is there some flexibility outside of the RA district to allow, maybe not for full, you know, large scale facilities, but

I think you mentioned community solar versus utility scale.

Thinking about how that mix looks and if there's a way that we can offer a benefit by creating more opportunity for community solar if you want to call it that in other districts.

I think, you know, for me, the expiration, the decommissioning are sort of tied together and I know one of the applicants that came to us did not plan to hold on to the property.

They were gonna develop it and then they were gonna flip it, right?

So, thinking about how we manage that.

If there's a maintenance plan in place, how does it transition to a new owner?

I think just to build on that, particularly when we get these developers that are giving us these beautiful plants, right?

This is going to be planted with all kinds of beautiful trees or wildflowers for pollinators and you're going to be able to graze on it and all that sounds wonderful.

Well, there's grazing as well.

So who's ensuring that that's being maintained and that's being planted properly?

So I would like to just be clear that what's going on in the solar is no different than

They said they were going to do this, they're going to do this.

And as staff has sort of gotten me better with, actually it was our former chair got me better with, the project gets sold.

And so the person who brings it to us is very rarely, and I don't know if that just happens to be the environment we're in here, that entity is rarely the one that brings it to fruition or brings it to completion, except for a couple of big players in town.

I think that's exactly why we're bringing this up because here we're taking what can be and is in many cases very valuable.

And here's where I want to, at some point when this comes back, I'd really like to have a deep conversation about prime soils.

And I would offer to this whole piece that 10% is not a threshold for me.

Now, it may be a threshold for a host of people, but telling me something that 10% of the soil on a land is

And that just quickly, that can easily be informed by looking at a map we've mapped.

But we have a map of where prime ed soils allegedly are located.

you know 50% or yeah but I'm with you I'm not 10% is too low but so I just but I get what you're saying but I also want to be clear that what we're preserving here is actually of use is actually long-term use not today's but actually has a commitment to keep that land in some form or shape that will in fact carry on the role that we're trying to preserve that's the thing that I'm seeing

that I'm in conflict with when I look around the county, how much of that land is really being harnessed and preserved for a good and common use in the future.

So I have something when we come to it that's some of my serious concerns about.

To your concern about enforcement, essentially, I mean, our suggestion in working with clients would be especially, you know, if there's things are not spelled out in the regulations, you know, if an applicant is coming before you and they're making a commitment or saying that they're making a commitment, condition, you know, bind them to that permit, you know, something to be reviewed, followed up on,

You know, their hypothetical example, you know, there was a project that we were reviewing that this is what we're developing.

But all that, all that land that we're telling you we're not developing, we may want to develop.

Okay, well, then what are we actually looking at?

If you're saying this is what you're developing, but you want infinite variability,

Then what are we doing here?

So we want applicants to come with as close to a baked plan as possible that they've done the site investigation to know where they can reasonably develop and where they can't reasonably develop.

Well, you also mentioned, I think, and this maybe gets to your point a little bit, it's bonding.

And if you think about, I mean, an erosion control plant, right, you have to bond until you stabilize the soil.

I mean, maybe there's some sort of a threshold here, maybe it's not stabilization, but maybe it's, I don't know, fill in the blank, where we feel like it's stabilized and you can release the bond, but it's longer than just soil stabilization.

The last thing I'll mention too, I was thinking about is technology, right?

This is an ever-changing

industry.

And I don't know, maybe batteries are going to get smaller.

Maybe we're going to need more.

Maybe the maybe the percentage of imperviousness in solar panels can be increased because you can create some kind of a honeycomb version or something.

I don't know.

Does the county have any specified quantitative goals around renewable energy?

The Climate Action Plan has some information in it.

My recollection is that that's about the county organization and not about the community at large.

The number that's on there is a county number.

Climate Protection Program Manager for the county.

So the targets, the emissions reduction targets are county wide, community wide.

So certainly looking to lead by example within local government operations.

But the goal or the target is to reduce emissions by 45 percent by 2030.

That's community wide.

What we the the plan has just right now, those emissions reduction targets for 2030 and 2050.

that develop smart goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, time-bound for the specific sectors within the plan.

So transportation, building, renewable energy.

So the point you made a minute ago about could we have goals with respect to the amount of let's say kilowatt hours generated.

I'm also curious if you in your consulting to the county are going to bring to us example language from comp plans for example because we're obviously in the process of updating our comprehensive plan and if you I feel like if you read the comprehensive plan for the rural area which as Lonnie said is most of the county

It doesn't seem like solar farms would fit in there when you read what we're trying to promote in the rural area.

I could read that and say, OK, then solar doesn't belong in the rural area.

So development of policies for the comp plan is not within the scope of our work.

We're focused on the regulations, but I think

I think the way we get to that, you know, for some of these things that don't lend themselves maybe to a regulation, they do become potential findings that you're evaluating your project by.

Because the people who are working on the ordinances,

I understand that, but they're also bringing to my understanding is that they're bringing to us sort of a revision or ideas for revisions to our ordinance.

Yes.

Our company is also assisting with the overall zoning ordinance.

Yeah.

Yes.

We have three that are going on right now.

We've got the comprehensive, we have this and we have wireless.

It is likely that they will be having one separate.

I personally find that a bit frustrating.

Like it seems, like you say again, it feels cart before horse in the sense that if you're

The comprehensive plan should set up a series of goals and recommendations that should lead into our zoning ordinance.

who specifically wanted to go this route.

That's why we're here.

We can pass that along.

And internally, we are working to make sure that we don't end up with the cart before the horse.

This conversation about solar and what you all are saying, we can wrap that in.

I mean, we're getting these notes and those thoughts are going to be wrapped into what we do with the comp plan and update that section.

It all does work together.

Can I ask some definitional things before we leave?

So there's multiple definitions.

Sometimes they are tied to

they're providing energy to users behind the meter, net meter, which personally I prefer.

I think because then you're directly attributing that project to a reduction of households consumption or an entity's consumption.

Dominion has a community solar program.

And so the DOE definition, community solar and shared solar kind of go hand in hand.

Shared solar is more where you're directly benefiting from the generated electricity.

Dominion does have a community solar program, and it's a little bit of a misnomer the way they title it.

And unfortunately, we have seen not from Dominion, but some from some developers in the state.

where they will come in and say it's a community solar project.

Your residents are benefiting from this project because then they can be a subscriber in Dominion's program.

Well, they can be a subscriber in Dominion's program regardless of whether or not you have a community solar project in your locality.

No, just because you have that community solar project in your locality doesn't mean that they're deriving energy produced from it.

And this is something that I've recently gained a little bit more clarity on, and this goes to the physics question.

Those smaller projects can tie into a

K.W.

So that for colleagues, that's something that we actually could look at for communities that

and a number of us talked about, why don't you, or this, I keep messing it up, the eco-village or eco-village, whatever, if everything's built.

If they were ever to do that, then they were in fact being self-sufficient or more so self-sufficient.

And so the delineation between community and how that can actually come to our developments and utility solar, which I am uncomfortable

because

That's right.

There is one locality we work with that says no more than 8,000 acres in the county can be used for solar.

I think it's three to five, something around that.

So if I could run through a couple of other things then write quickly.

and say, look at the available land around that.

The Department of Energy already has a model online that shows that.

Let's not overdo that.

But let's say, these are the areas which are in play, and then have the county's sort of economic development work with those entities

if there is a structured way, and there's some ways to do that for the county to benefit from being in that partnership.

because there are some ways in which you can generate some income from that.

Because one thing that I would like to see coming from this is that if we're going to have more than the four here, let's say we get to a dozen, there's some revenue to put into staff to train EMS and the fire.

There's some money to put in the staff that has an individual who can actually do monitoring.

So she could do monitoring of these things because there's a complication to that.

I'm personally for what?

What happens, if anything, if someone whose property is in land use says, I want to now have, and they're within the two-mile radius, and says, yes, I'd like to lease some of my property to a solar thing because I'm within the map, or in addition to what happens to someone who's in a conservation easement,

and if there's some value with that.

And if there is, I would like the supervisors to have a conversation about what are we doing here?

What are we doing here?

Because we're letting a piece of property have a reduced tax base and their income from that piece of property has just moved to a certain level.

Well, I can't say and people will say, I'm trying to say, I'm trying to take that away.

No, I just want to make sure that the intended use of the land

is in fact flows, the benefits from that flows to the opponent, but the revenue from that, as far as taxes are concerned, flow back to the community.

The other thing I would like to have some conversation about is, and this comes to my colleagues here, instead of us having this sort of mono approach to rural, that we actually think about what is, what can also be, and this is coming to Fred's idea, we don't know

If we could do it, and I don't know what the cost is at right now, if we could get to some of the hydrogen, there's a whole pool of hydrogen that's just below the crust.

That's the cheapest and cleanest energy we could ever get out of there.

There's a source of it that I don't need energy for that I can actually just use it as it is.

And so it's the determination between what's ag and what's not ag and the whole idea of what's a prime land versus not prime land.

And then they come back to the whole piece that we tend to have in another part of our lives, if we were having a new industry come to town, sort of a brick and mortar industry,

There would be a great deal of interaction between economic development, people, other people on how that comes in.

I'm not sure.

And I just say that because I don't know what my sense has been when solar happens.

And while I am a free market guy, I'm not a libertarian, but I am a free market guy.

I am a free market guy.

I do think that since we have only this much land,

There ought to be some kind of meaningful discussion between the economic development people and the people who are supposedly running, we're not supposedly, I don't mean that in that derogatory way, but who have been elected to run the community.

I just want to understand these questions up here if we had answered them all which you never could have done in 90 minutes we all know that right we would have been doing your job and I know you're trying to get illicit from us our opinions on various things or get a sense of what's most important to us but at what point do you come do you come back to us next with

I was asking for next steps.

No, no.

And I would tell you if there's anything important that occurs to you, you wake up in the middle of the night and think, I need to share this, just email me.

Email me.

Yeah, email Bill and he'll get it to us.

Well, thank you for the presentation.

I'll share that.

Thank you for the discussion.

With that, we'll adjourn the meeting and then we have to get over to six o'clock soon.