Opinion | Are There Better Places to Put Large Solar Farms Than These Forests?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

66% : For the great promise of renewable energy to be realized, states like Virginia must create an environment where solar, nature and people can peaceably coexist.
62% : Many of these facilities are operated by tech giants, such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, that have committed to renewable energy.
61% : While some places are too steep or too far from high-voltage transmission lines to be potential solar sites, a more equitable, transparent and environmentally sensitive distribution of solar energy is possible.
58% : In every conceivable scenario that avoids catastrophic climate change, solar energy must play a central role in shifting our economy off fossil fuels.
57% : There are plenty of places where solar energy could be developed without triggering conflicts with natural resources or concerns about rural landscapes.
56% : The American Farmland Trust projects that to meet renewable energy targets, many eastern states, which have relatively high population densities, may need to devote between 1.5 percent and 6 percent of their undeveloped land to solar panels.
55% : Environmental groups such as the Piedmont council and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, while supporting clean energy generally, have found themselves joining farm bureaus to call for measures to reduce large-scale solar's impacts on nature and farmland.
53% : "It's very unsettling from our side to see the hardening on the sides of the issue," says Judy Dunscomb, a senior conservation scientist with the Nature Conservancy, which supports both renewable energy and forest conservation.
52% : Although she is all for clean energy, Ms. Pettus opposed the project's immense size, fearing it will destroy forests, disrupt soil and pollute streams and rivers in the place she calls home.
48% : Dominion, in partnership with T.N.C., will also be developing a solar farm in southwestern Virginia on a flattened mountaintop that was blasted away for coal.

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