In late 2019, The Sierra Club Montgomery County group was asked to consider the proposed Zoning Text Amendment 20-01 (this link goes to the latest revised version) concerning: Solar Collection System that will allow a limited amount of solar projects serving multiple county residents to be built in our Agricultural Reserve. The Sierra Club did not initiate the ZTA – but on due consideration, internal discussion, and review of our national and state policies - and after making some recommendations to improve it, and seeing several substantive improvements, - we now support it.
We understand this is a complicated and sometimes contentious issue. There has been a lot of information circulated that in many cases is incomplete, inaccurate, or even misleading. The webinar organized by Sierra Club Montgomery County Group on Aug 27, 2020 aims to present important fact-based information that underlies our position.
Read the complete remarks HERE.
Why we support the Zoning Text Amendment ZTA 20-01 in Montgomery County. Read our blog post
Conditional Use vs Limited Use
As the ZTA is now written, it gives the County’s Planning Board a large set of specific conditions and requirements that must be met to gain project approval. But, as the memo below reveals, so-called “Conditional Use” zoning would effectively stop Community Solar by basically eliminating the County Planning Board, which has supported limited solar development, from the final solar project approval process. “Conditional Use” would subject solar projects to time-consuming and expensive additional requirements and to the SUBJECTIVE will of an unidentified Hearing Examiner who could basically terminate proposed solar projects for almost any reason. In effect, even a limited amount of solar production reserved for low-income households would be banned unless the additional “conditions” are met, and then still be exposed to the uncertain and potentially arbitrary decision of an Examiner whose connection to the County is not specified. "Conditional Use" was formerly called "Special Exception," and that's what it's for - one-off, individual exceptions to zoning rules.
To learn why the Sierra Club and organizations such as the Chesapeake Climate Action Network - have rejected this last-minute attempt to effectively ban Community Solar from our county click HERE
Read the memo from the National Sierra Club agreeing with the Montgomery County Group support of ZTA 20-01.
Read the letter from the Montgomery County Sierra Club to the County Council asking to withdraw from Council consideration the Solar ZTA 20-01 bill as amended on January 26th. It also urges the council to consider an alternate solution that won’t effectively ban Community Solar production in our county -- but would permit a scaled-back amount of solar on MoCo agricultural
land.
Read the letter that Delegate Barve has written to the Montgomery County Council asking the Council to withdraw what has become a potentially harmful bill, the modified ZTA 20-01, because it would effectively Ban 98% of Affordable Solar Energy in Montgomery County. It includes restrictive conditions that effectively shut down any possibility of building solar projects on open land in the Agricultural Reserve. Here's our blog about it.
Highlights from Aug 27th Webinar on Solar Power - Key Points from the Presentations
- Marylanders’ use of electricity is one of our two top sources of greenhouse gas production (transportation is the other) and of other health-harming pollutants, and we’re far away from our goal to reduce greenhouse gases by moving to clean renewable energy – wind and solar.
- Our state’s Community Solar program provides access to low-cost locally generated solar power to the over half of Maryland households that can’t have solar on their own rooftop – apartment dwellers, condo owners, those whose roofs aren’t suitable or have too much shade, and others.
- The program specifically includes solar access for low- and moderate-income households, who so far have been essentially left out of solar development.
- Solar projects allowed under this program are relatively small (2 megawatts or less) by solar standards, but each can serve several hundred households. However, they are too large – generally 12 to 15 acres – to be built on buildings, and have to be built on open land.
- Even though some Montgomery County residents served by Pepco are already participating in community solar projects, all of the ground-based community solar projects in the Pepco service area have been built in Prince George’s County, because of Montgomery County’s restrictive land use policies.
- Rooftop and parking lot solar are important ways to meet the needs of their property owners, and thus take that demand off the grid, and we support their expansion. However, rooftops and parking lots can’t meet the energy needs of the homes and businesses that can’t have their own solar.
- Sites like the Dickerson power plant – which might permit building about 60 megawatts of solar – and our limited landfills would meet only a small fraction of the estimated 2,500 megawatts of solar that our county will need when we achieve 100% clean renewable energy.
- Solar projects effectively combined with agricultural practices are important resources to fight climate change: the solar power generation displaces carbon pollution (and other pollutants) caused by burning fossil fuels, and the agricultural components capture carbon. This combined carbon reduction effect is almost 100 times greater than reforestation or regenerative agriculture alone, which absorb carbon but don’t reduce its generation.
- Compared to conventional agriculture, these “agrivoltaic” practices are much more effective in conserving soil water, reducing erosion, storing carbon in the soil, and sustaining pollinators.
- Pollinator-friendly solar farms have been established successfully at scale throughout the U.S. They actually reduce operating costs of solar arrays – thus lowering the cost of electricity produced – and have demonstrated positive results in increasing the number of pollinators as well as the productivity of surrounding agriculture.
These presentations summarize some of the reasons why our County needs to build solar on open land in the Agricultural Reserve. They also show the benefits that would accrue both to county residents who want to get their electricity from solar, but can’t do it themselves, and to agriculture itself through the new science of agrivoltaics.
Watch the Aug 27th webinar on “Solar Power & Agriculture in Montgomery County: Opportunities and Risks”
TAKE ACTION: Email the Montgomery County Council members to support ZTA 20-01
Read the Sierra Club Montgomery County detailed testimony to the County Council presented in February 2020.
Read the Sierra Club Montgomery County letter to the County Council submitted in July 2020.
Follow up letter on ZTA 20-01 - Sept 24, 2020
For questions, please contact Shruti Bhatnagar at Shruti.bhatnagar@mdsierra.org