College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Community Sustainability

Fast and (or?) Fair

Are rapid and equitable processes for large-scale solar development mutually exclusive?

Community opposition to the siting of large-scale solar (LSS) projects has resulted in increased soft costs and permitting risk for LSS projects. In response, the transfer of permitting authority and decision-making away from community members and toward state regulatory bodies has accelerated. While such efforts to streamline LSS permitting are thought to speed development in the short run, it is not clear how fair they are, or will be, to host communities, specifically in providing meaningful opportunities for public engagement. This project, led by Doug Bessette, an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability, and funded by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under the Solar Energy Technologies Office Award Number DE-EE0011469, examines the twin goals of fast and fair LSS development, and whether there are opportunities to make LSS siting both faster and fairer.

To achieve these goals, the MSU project team, along with researchers from Cornell University, Virginia Tech, Ohio State University and Utah State University, are using place-based reflexive approach to research LSS development in 10 host communities in 4 regions of the US (Midwest, Mountain West, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic). This multi-institutional team is engaged in rigorous content analysis of documents and resources pertinent to LSS development, observing LSS-related events and engagement activities, conducting stakeholder interviews to characterize the state of LSS development in those communities, and identifying parameters to measure and test using a longitudinal survey deployed in each host community.