Solar boom in Oregon could reshape rural landscapes, agriculture

In November, fifth-generation Klamath County farmer Dave Noble got a letter in the mail, crumpled it up and threw it into the trash can.

Noble, like other landowners in the high desert community of Bonanza known for its cattle, dairy cows and year-round sunshine, has for years been inundated with offers from solar developers.

That same month, Oregon approved its largest solar farm to date – and likely the nation’s largest – on nearly 10,000 acres of farmland on the opposite end of the state in Morrow County. Big solar projects also have been approved or are under review in other counties.

The solar expansion comes as Oregon races to fight climate change by meeting aggressive carbon emissions reduction mandates as well as to satiate power-hungry data centers.

But the boom competes with another state mandate, enshrined in statute and in Oregon’s unique statewide land-use planning goals: to protect agricultural land.

Despite state efforts to limit solar’s footprint on Oregon’s best farmland, an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive shows the vast majority of the solar acres are on private land zoned for exclusive farm use.

Two-thirds of the projects are on high-value farmland or other soils designated for growing crops – thanks to a loophole that has allowed the state and individual counties to approve them despite strict restrictions.

Read More: Loophole in state rules paves way to ever-larger solar projects on Oregon farmland

While that’s still a tiny fraction of Oregon’s agricultural land, the state’s dueling interests and the projects to date point to the mixed success of its policies to shield valuable farmland from solar conversion.

Oregon also lacks clear state rules spelling out how to measure the damage to rural economies or how to offset that damage.

In the case of the massive Sunstone Solar array in Morrow County, the developer plans an infusion of millions of dollars in a per-acre payment to a new county fund for agricultural uses. But the project is an outlier.

In the absence of clear state requirements, the solar surge could over time fundamentally alter Oregon’s agricultural landscapes, taking away local farm and service jobs and transforming long-established rural communities.

While some in rural Oregon welcome the revenue and the changes, others see the billions of solar panels as a threat to their way of life, wildlife habitat, scenic views and tourism – and are pushing the state to set some boundaries.

Noble and other farmers and ranchers in Klamath County said they have chased off solar surveyors trespassing on their properties and watched as a smattering of small solar farms have set up in nearby fields.

Four years ago, they banded together to fight a large solar proposal on high-value farmland near Bonanza and learned this fall that it had finally died.

“We have a unique little town,’ Noble said. “We’ve got a lot of history invested here. If you pave it over with solar panels, you’ll change our whole world.”

SOLAR GROWTH

Over the past two decades, much of the renewable energy development in Oregon has focused on massive wind farms, as well as dozens of smaller solar farms with more limited power-generating capacity.

Wind turbines now produce 15% of Oregon’s electricity. Solar farms supply about 4% of the state’s energy.

But that’s about to change with the huge solar projects recently approved or under review. Once constructed, they will double the current generating capacity of solar panels in the state.

The solar boom is driven partly by advancing technologies, decreasing costs and generous federal subsidies for solar development and also by skyrocketing demand for electricity from Oregon’s data centers and the electrification of cars and homes.

The state’s climate targets, first put into law by the Legislature in 2007, are the underlying driver for the state’s solar industry. Oregon’s two major electric companies — Portland General Electric and Pacific Power — are required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with electricity sold in Oregon by 80% by 2030 and to reach 100% emission-free electricity sources by 2040.

Solar projects currently on the books, approved by both the state and the counties, would take up 44,000 acres of Oregon farmland, according to data from the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development.

The Oregonian/OregonLive analysis of the figures shows 20% of that is high-value farmland and 45% is soil deemed suitable for growing crops, a lower farmland category. The rest of the solar acreage is on rangeland or soils with no history of irrigation where the state hopes to steer the biggest solar facilities.

Another nearly 30,000 acres of solar projects are proposed for farmland and likely to be approved by Oregon’s Energy Facility Siting Council, a state board that oversees solar and other energy projects. Again, much of the proposed acreage is on high-value soil or land suitable for cultivation. If approved, the projects would double the state’s solar acreage to 74,000 – or about 115 square miles, slightly smaller than the city of Portland.

(There may be other projects in the works under review by counties, but the state doesn’t track them until it receives notice from the counties of their decisions.)

Several counties, particularly in northeastern Oregon, will see a disproportionate impact, with an especially high concentration of approved and proposed multi-thousand-acre solar projects in Morrow, Lake, Wallowa, Crook, Gilliam and Jefferson counties.

The state’s solar total still equals less than 1% of Oregon’s agricultural area of 15 million acres. Morrow County has more than 20,000 acres of solar in some stage of permitting (including recently proposed projects) — that’s over a quarter of the state’s total and represents about 2.5% of the county’s farmland.

Those percentages are likely to grow as multi-thousand-acre solar projects multiply.

The state lost 4% of its agricultural area between 2017 and 2022, or about 660,000 acres, according to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, likely due to a range of factors such as rezoning into residential, commercial and industrial uses. That’s the second highest percentage decrease among Western states. Agriculture is one of Oregon’s top industries and contributes 5.4% to Oregon’s gross domestic product.

Developers tend to favor high-quality farmland since it’s flat, already cleared, has great sunlight exposure and often includes access to roads and power lines, making it easier and less expensive to develop.

Solar’s rapid growth will have a vastly different impact on Oregon’s landscape than existing wind farms, which have small footprints and can work with other land uses. Farmers can continue to grow crops or graze livestock to the very base of the turbines. Wild animals can use the land to forage or as wildlife corridors.

Solar panels cover up the entire site, leaving little room for anything other than soaking up rays.

WORRIES IN BONANZA

On a recent winter day just outside Bonanza, with a population of 400 at 4,000 feet elevation, Noble drove his truck up rolling hills of sagebrush and juniper trees to check on his cattle.

Noble owns about 900 acres in the area with his sons and raises 1,000 cows and grows barley, wheat and alfalfa for feed.

From the top of a ridge criss-crossed by three transmission lines, Noble pointed out the cows lazily grazing in the wide-open valley below.

Adjoining his land is a farm with irrigation rights that produces hay and pasture where a developer had proposed in 2020 to lay down nearly 3,000 acres of solar panels and battery storage – at the time, one of the largest solar proposals in the state.

To Noble, taking that big a chunk of farmland out of production could hobble the economic web of his vibrant community built on agriculture, one that supports a school, a church and several businesses and restaurants.

He said the solar project would have blocked a natural wetland and wildlife corridor for mule deer, antelope, elk, coyotes and wolves, and was planned in a spot highly visible from the road, marring views that tourists treasure.

Noble and fellow farmers and ranchers also cited the possibility of fires under the solar panels and in the battery storage – which has happened both in Oregon’s solar fields and at battery storage facilities in New York and California. They also worry about the potential leaching of metals from solar equipment into the soil and then the region’s aquifer.

They formed Oregon Responsible Solar (motto: “Save our sunshine for wildlife and farms”) and later the Farm and Wildlife Conservancy to fight the project and any others on local farmland. They sought support at local events and attended county and state meetings.

“We have to put up with all the eyesore, farming and environmental impact and all the power goes to cities that are far away,” Noble said.

A solar project wouldn’t create permanent local jobs much beyond the construction phase and wouldn’t spend much money locally, other than on temporary lodging, fuel or food, Noble and the others said.

And beyond the lease payments to a handful of landowners, Bonanza likely wouldn’t see much of the tax money that a developer would pay to Klamath County, Oregon’s fourth largest county, they said.

“Anything that we produce continually contributes to our local economies,” said Hank Cheyne, a local farmer and irrigation district president. “When we’re buying (fertilizer or equipment), each dollar we spend on our suppliers cycles through the community.”

The farmers and ranchers said plenty of land is available for solar in the area that’s not valuable to agriculture and that’s out of sight.

“We’re not completely against solar. We just want to see it built in the right spot and responsibly and not take out farm and ranchland and wildlife habitat,” said Justin Eary, an irrigation district manager.

Perhaps the most challenging issue has been the uncertainty and secrecy surrounding solar proposals. Other than the constant flow of letters of interest, the locals have been mostly in the dark, Cheyne said.

Solar projects often change hands, developers’ communication with local residents and neighboring landowners can be spotty and surveyors have opened gates and trespassed onto farms, Cheyne and others said.

“They come in and they basically try to bully their way in,” Cheyne said. “There’s no thought about how to make the communities better long-term. It’s just, ‘Let’s throw some cash at it. We’ll get these people out of our way.’”

In response to local opposition, the Bonanza project’s developer, Hecate Energy, downsized the project site to 1,000 acres, then handed it off to a second developer, Apex Clean Energy.

In December, the locals got word that the project was officially terminated. It had been one of the most controversial projects in the state, Oregon Energy Department officials said.

Still, given Bonanza’s 300 days a year of sunshine, the farmers expect a new batch of letters from solar developers any day now.

And when other projects are proposed on farmland, they’ll be ready to oppose them, said rancher Robert Bacon.

“The threat has not really gone away,” Bacon said.

BIGGEST PROJECT SO FAR

In Morrow County, farmers and ranchers see solar development through a different lens.

Sunstone Solar, Oregon’s largest project to date, will feature nearly 4 million solar panels on an area roughly the size of 7,000 football fields about 15 miles southeast of Boardman.

Kenny Grieb, a third-generation farmer with 4,400 acres, is leasing several thousand acres to the project.

Grieb is already surrounded by solar and wind farms and has three gas pipelines running through his property as well as a gas transformer station and part of a transmission line.

“Wheat is not the king that it once was in getting help from the government program,” he said. “So I figured this is a way to diversify and get some extra income, like a lot of my neighbors have.”

Grieb said he was close to retirement and won’t continue farming, though he plans to stay in his house near the solar farm. Giving up on the fields he’s worked for years and where his father’s ashes are spread isn’t easy, he said, but he’s positive the Sunstone project will contribute to the local economy.

That’s especially the case, he said, because Sunstone has offered the per-acre fee.

Its developer, North Carolina-based Pine Gate Renewables, commissioned economic research firm ECONorthwest to use a special software to evaluate the indirect economic impacts of the solar project and to determine compensation.

Upon the start of construction, Pine Gate will contribute $1,179 per acre – or up to about $11 million for Sunstone’s 9,400 acres – to a fund administered by Morrow County. It could be used for such things as helping the local grain growers’ co-op buy a grain elevator and local farmers buy precision farm equipment.

“We believe the investments proposed … will more than offset the negative adverse impacts that would result from the conversion of cultivated land for use by the proposed facility,” Logan Stephens, Pine Gate vice president of project development, said in an email.

The company also is eager to help the state reach its climate mandates, he said, and expects to soon wrap up contracts for selling the power to utilities and other large electricity users.

Wagon Trail Solar, a recently approved 7,450-acre project right next to Sunstone, followed suit and adopted a similar mitigation fee approach.

John Kilkenny, another third-generation farmer, said his family is leasing several thousand acres of its 14,000-acre property to the Wagon Trail operators and believes the farmland is the right place for solar. He also has wind turbines on the land where his Irish grandfather began running sheep more than 110 years ago.

Kilkenny said the portion of farmland leased to Wagon Trail has been used mostly for growing dryland wheat. But, given it gets just a few inches of rain per year, it only occasionally gives a good crop, he said.

“I was born and raised there. I spent my whole life farming that ground. And I can say it’s the most marginal agricultural land that’s ever been tilled,” he said. “There’s a lot of good wheat farm ground in Oregon, but this isn’t it. We kind of hang around and make it work and wait for the good years.”

Few in Morrow County like the way solar projects look, Kilkenny said, but they bring important benefits to farmers and ranchers like himself. He plans on continuing to farm as do a number of other farmers leasing to solar operators in the county.

Their farms and communities will be better off because of it, he said.

“When the landowners have an additional revenue source in areas where the farming business is a tough go, it’s a good thing. … You can see it driving by who has green energy revenue sources on their farms based upon the equipment parked in their driveway,” Kilkenny said. “The money goes to improve the remainder of their farm operation.”

Read More: Loophole in state rules paves way to ever-larger solar projects on Oregon farmland

— Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at [email protected] or 971-421-3154.

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