Big solar setback reflects fossilized (fuel) leadership

In an era where we need to move intentionally away from fossil fuels, I encourage us to explore ways in which to ease the inclusion of renewables, not make them more difficult.

The Allen County Commissioners had been discussing setbacks for solar panel fields. A setback is a buffer within which activity cannot occur, so as to not unduly impact one’s neighbors.

Despite recommendations for smaller setbacks, the commissioners selected 1,000 feet — over three football fields — which strikes me as overly large and arbitrary.

What might justify a 1,000 foot setback? One concern is that the panels are ugly.

I can see that, though personally I might also view them as industrial art.

That said, if appearance is the problem, the priority should be to hide them.

There might also be an aesthetic that our farmland should be farmland. I can appreciate that as well, though I observe that we do allow all sorts of activities on private property, and have great pride in the right of a landowner to do what they want with their property, so why not farm electricity as well as soybeans?

I wish more property owners would grow more trees, but that is another story.

I have also heard complaints about noise.

However, solar panels are not noisy compared to wind farms, farming operations or neighborhoods.

In fact, the noise they produce has been compared to that from a refrigerator.

Where does 1,000 feet come from? I explored analogous situations.

A contentious land use operation is the confined feeding operation or the even larger concentrated animal feeding operation. The operations can be quite odorous, dusty and loud and come with risk of water pollution when runoff storage fails.

The state requires buffers for manure storage structures at 400 feet from residential and public buildings. The actual buildings holding animals might be 1,000 feet or more.

I understand the 1,000 feet in that context — the animals smell and operations are loud.

Another example is surface mining.

Many won’t realize that extensive parts of our state have been surface mined for coal.

The primary reason for that lack of awareness is that the impacts are hidden.

Traveling down the road, you simply don’t see anything but trees.

That observation opens the door for exploring alternatives to a massive setback. But 300 feet is the answer to the question here.

Blasting (involving dynamite) is 1,000 feet. So why are we imposing setbacks for solar that rival smelly CFOs and explosions?

The solution to a wide variety of visual insults in our landscape is to hide them. Why can’t we do that here?

I would argue that the solution to buffering solar fields should not be addressed using an overly large setback, but by making rules about the composition of the buffer itself. I would suggest a 100-foot vegetated visual buffer of (hopefully) native trees.

It would be difficult to see through such a vegetated area even in the dead of winter when the trees have lost their leaves.

Furthermore, since trees in our area might grow to 100 feet in height and cast a significant shadow early and later in the day, solar operators would need to be strategic about a further voluntary setback based on their own cost/benefit analysis.

Consequently, a forest buffer imposes an additional operational gap before any panels could be installed profitably.

What about commercial viability? If you can bear with a little napkin math, we can consider a one-megawatt solar farm, an output that provides a standard for us to work with.

That farm might take 10 acres, and constructing the solar field might cost $1 million.

If we apply the 1,000-yard buffer around that 10 acres, the acreage jumps to 162 acres.

At $15,000 an acre, there is a substantial growth in investment when such a buffer is added.

Total so far? Millions.

What happens if we reduce the buffer to 100 feet? The acreage then is 17 acres.

We just saved the developer $2 million.

So now what? The setback has been established. But that doesn’t mean it is set forever.

We can wise up. We need to move away from such great reliance on fossil fuels.

Forcing continued dependence on them, especially coal, is not only unrealistic, but also irresponsible for our children and their children.

Ultimately, solar is not the only answer to address the need for affordable clean energy with minimal environmental impacts.

It comes with its own issues, such as mining impacts during the extraction of materials to make the panels, and cloudy days.

However, it is a part of a toolkit to help get us where we want to go.

Bruce Kingsbury is director of the Environmental Resources Center at Purdue University Fort Wayne.