Across rural Virginia, county boards that once had the power to block large solar farms through zoning now face a different reality. A state law on the books since recent legislative sessions strips localities of the ability to enact blanket prohibitions on qualifying ground-mounted solar facilities. But it does not leave them powerless. Under Section 15.2-2288.7 of the Code of Virginia, counties and cities must allow large solar projects to proceed through a special exception process, while retaining authority to impose conditions on setbacks, visual screening, and decommissioning plans.
The practical effect, as of spring 2026, is a framework that forces local governments to say yes to solar in principle while preserving their ability to shape how and where projects get built.
What the law actually does
The statute draws a firm line between outright rejection and conditional approval. Under the law, localities must ensure that qualifying ground-mounted solar installations have a viable path to approval somewhere within their jurisdiction, subject to case-by-case review through a special exception or conditional use permit.
That does not mean developers get a blank check. County boards can still designate sensitive areas where solar is disfavored, such as prime agricultural soils or historic viewsheds. They can require setback distances from property lines, mandate vegetative buffers to shield neighboring homes, and demand detailed plans for removing panels and equipment at the end of a project’s useful life. What they cannot do is use those tools collectively to create a de facto ban.
The distinction matters most in counties where large-scale solar proposals have collided with residents worried about farmland conversion, declining property values, and altered landscapes. In places like Culpeper, Spotsylvania, and Halifax counties, solar siting has generated heated public meetings and divided boards of supervisors. The statute pushes those fights out of the abstract zoning phase and into project-specific negotiations, where conditions can be attached to individual permits rather than used to wall off entire jurisdictions.
The broader legislative context
Section 15.2-2288.7 does not exist in isolation. It is part of a broader push by the Virginia General Assembly to accelerate renewable energy development, a trajectory shaped significantly by the Virginia Clean Economy Act of 2020. That law committed the state’s largest utilities to achieving 100 percent carbon-free electricity by mid-century and designated thousands of megawatts of solar and onshore wind as being in the public interest. The siting preemption in Section 15.2-2288.7 functions as a companion measure, ensuring that local zoning does not become a bottleneck for projects the state has declared essential to its energy goals.
Separately, the Virginia State Corporation Commission maintains resources on the assessment and taxation of solar facilities, including guidance on how utility-scale solar property is valued under Title 58.1 of the Code. These tax provisions run parallel to the siting rules but answer a different question: not whether a project can be built, but how it contributes to local revenue once operational. Confusion between the two has fueled some local opposition. Residents sometimes see a project consuming farmland while enjoying partial tax advantages, without recognizing that siting authority and tax treatment are governed by separate sections of state law.
Where the gaps are
For all its clarity on paper, the statute’s real-world track record is harder to pin down. As of May 2026, no primary documentation has surfaced identifying specific local ordinances that have been formally voided or challenged in court under Section 15.2-2288.7. That makes the law’s enforcement history difficult to evaluate. A statute can sit on the books for years before a dispute forces a judge to interpret its boundaries.
Granular data on where large solar projects are concentrating across the state is also limited in official form. Utility interconnection queues and SCC filings offer some picture of capacity in the pipeline, but project-by-project mapping tied specifically to the preemption’s impact has not been compiled in a publicly accessible format. That gap matters because one of the central concerns about state-level solar siting rules is geographic equity: whether large installations are being funneled into economically disadvantaged rural areas where land is cheap and political resistance is thinner, without ensuring those communities share proportionally in the benefits.
Legislative history that would illuminate the General Assembly’s intent, including floor debate transcripts or committee testimony about the special exception carve-out, remains difficult to locate beyond citation trails in the Legislative Information System. Without that record, questions about whether lawmakers anticipated specific county conflicts or designed the conditions framework to address particular concerns stay open.
What this means for landowners, developers, and local officials
For anyone navigating a solar proposal in Virginia right now, the starting point is the current text of Section 15.2-2288.7. Reading it alongside the local zoning ordinance that applies to a proposed site will clarify which elements are fixed by state law and which are negotiable through the special exception process.
County boards reviewing applications should expect that any ordinance functioning as a blanket prohibition will not survive a legal challenge. Developers should expect that approval will come with conditions, potentially significant ones, on setbacks, screening, stormwater management, and end-of-life removal. And residents concerned about a project near their property should know that the law guarantees them a public hearing at the special exception stage, where site-specific impacts can be raised and addressed.
Virginia’s approach is neither full state preemption nor unfettered local control. It occupies a middle ground that is still being tested, one project and one county board vote at a time. How that middle ground holds up will depend less on the statute’s text than on the willingness of local governments, developers, and communities to use the conditional approval process the law was designed to create.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
