Solar siting legislation was unsuccessful in advancing during the 2024 General Assembly session, preventing Maryland from crafting a formal solar energy plan for streamlining perceived obstacles and codifying uniform standards. A group of key stakeholders has now worked for months to craft a solar siting proposal for Maryland’s 2025 General Assembly session that would serve as a basis for legislation to come. One of the key components of the group’s new proposal is a 4-mile-wide solar corridor adjacent to high powered transmission lines throughout the state. Counties would be required to process permits for solar development as a “by right” use within the corridor, meaning solar developers would receive faster approvals, reduced costs, and increased predictability but counties would forfeit the ability to exert more oversight of projects. Statewide, this corridor comprises 2,886,526 acres of land. 75% of the lands identified within this proposed solar corridor are located within various state-designated preservation areas. For some regions on the Eastern Shore, that percentage is as high as 96%.
Eastern Shore Land Conservancy was not invited to attend meetings with this group of stakeholders but were kept apprised of proceedings by various members. In response to the group’s proposal, ESLC spearheaded a letter signed by numerous land conservancy advocates across the state to offer feedback in hopes of making key changes prior to introduction this legislative session. The letter emphasizes the importance of upholding public trust, the need for specificity on state-owned lands, and a request for more robust mitigation.
The current draft proposal attempts to acknowledge Maryland’s conservation goals by mandating a $3,500 per acre mitigation fee for projects sited within a preservation area. However, for true mitigation to occur, site specific impacts need to be more carefully considered. Rather than a flat mitigation fee, the fees assessed should reflect regional variations in land value. The proposed flat mitigation fees are also only applied to projects that occur in designated preservation areas. These preservation areas, identified as the most important in the state for historic, cultural, agricultural or environmental reasons, are worthy of even more robust protection than a flat mitigation fee. Our letter also argues that mitigation fees should be applied to any solar development project (regardless of the land’s preservation status) due to inevitable land use disruption and impacts to agricultural production.
Will Maryland need to develop preserved land in order to meet its renewable energy goals? 727,943 acres of the lands mapped within the working group’s proposed solar corridor are actually located outside of designated preservation areas. And this number well exceeds any existing estimates for how much land will be needed for Maryland to achieve its current solar goals. Identifying and avoiding areas that are key to conservation and preservation can be a useful tool to help guide solar development to the most appropriate places – from both a cultural and environmental perspective. The stakeholders’ current proposed plan to site solar based solely upon transmission line locations and then require a flat mitigation fee for compromising preservation areas does little to disincentivize developers from siting projects on important open space.
In the working group’s proposed corridor map, identified preservation areas include Rural Legacy Areas, Priority Preservation Areas, and Targeted Ecological Areas (TEAs). (While the working group did not include conservation easement acreage in their total sum of affected preservation areas, protection of conservation easements needs to be more explicitly stated.) These areas have received special designation for preservation because of the unique attributes they possess. For example, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources calls Targeted Ecological Areas (TEAs) “lands and watersheds of high ecological value that have been identified as conservation priorities for natural resource protection. These areas represent the most ecologically valuable areas in the state: they are the best of the best. The purpose of TEAs is to protect ecologically important lands, address issues with forest fragmentation, habitat degradation, and water quality, and promote shared responsibility for land conservation.” On the Eastern Shore of Maryland, over 218,000 acres of these precious TEAs fall within the proposed solar corridor.
Similarly, Maryland’s Rural Legacy Program preserves large, contiguous tracts of land to enhance natural resource, agricultural, forestry and environmental protection while supporting a sustainable land base for natural resource-based industries such as forestry and agriculture. Statewide, 431,364.87 acres of Rural Legacy areas fall within the proposed solar corridor—102,321 acres of which are within Eastern Shore Rural Legacy areas. Accelerating solar energy development on designated preservation areas backsteps our communal work towards numerous land conservation goals including the 40% by 2040 goal from the Maryland the Beautiful Act of 2023, the Chesapeake Bay Agreement’s additional two-million-acre land conservation goal by 2025, and President Biden’s executive order to conserve 30% of the country’s lands and waters by 2030.
While the renewable energy provided by solar developments can positively impact our current climate crisis, the conservation of undeveloped land and its myriad ecosystem services (from carbon sequestration to flood mitigation to water quality protection) is equally essential for achieving our climate goals. Solar installations can disrupt land preservation efforts by impacting ecosystems, wildlife habitats, and agricultural areas if they are not carefully sited. Large-scale solar farms require extensive land, which can lead to habitat destruction, fragmentation of ecosystems, and threats to biodiversity. As just one example, the current proposed corridor overlaps with 1,153,666.96 acres of habitat for FIDS (forest interior dwelling bird species) whose populations have been on the decline for decades specifically due to the loss of forest habitat and wetlands, hedges, meadows, and grasslands that these species also depend upon. Eastern forest birds in particular have declined 27% since 1970. Essential for seed dispersal, pollination, balanced ecosystems, and also for birding, photography, hunting, and nature tourism, FIDS are a key player in Maryland’s culture, landscape, and economy. Their important habitat is overlapped by the proposed solar corridor throughout the state, including nearly all of the solar corridor in Western and Southern Maryland.
In addition to habitat destruction and fragmentation, placing solar projects on prime agricultural land can reduce the space available for food production, affecting both local economies and food security. Conversely—blocking all solar development would continue to make our communities reliant upon nonrenewable energy. Exclusively committing to a single endeavor—only solar development or only conservation easements—can prevent essential services. This is not a lesser of two evils. It’s a balance of two goods. Finding the right tension between modes of conservation and sustainable development is key. ESLC is committed to fostering this balance through advocacy and continued close monitoring throughout the legislative session.
Proposed Corridor and Preservation Areas
