Farmland in the US is of prime interest for grid-scale solar energy development, yet the legalities and governance of solar energy leases are complex and ever-evolving. Therefore, there is a growing need to define and legitimate what farmland is worth prioritizing for (or protecting from) solar development and to clarify the processes for negotiating private solar leases, particularly with developers’ use of non-disclosure agreements and option contracts. This seminar will draw on recent scholarship of energy justice and practices of legitimation to discuss how these legal tools are employed in solar leasing, as well as how they relate to and differ from historic processes of energy and land use development, such as hydraulic fracturing. Situated in the US state of Pennsylvania, qualitative interviews with solar stakeholders and farmers entering solar leases show how grid-scale solar energy leasing has introduced new legitimations of power over energy transitions. Farmers enter solar leases for multiple reasons, of which economic gain is a central but insufficient factor; these decisions also hinged on the hope that the land will be farmable again after solar panels are removed. Yet, as solar was described as a “thirty-year cover crop,” negotiating terms for agrivoltaics was not observed. Further, solar developers have utilized option contracts and non-disclosure agreements, building on land use governance structures of fossil-fuel development that mitigate collective transparency between landowners. These findings are situated in both the fraught legacies of energy production in PA, as well as in three main tenets of energy justice, highlighting the caution and hope associated with solar rollouts contributing to just and sustainable energy transitions.
Bio:
Dr. Kaitlyn Spangler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education at Pennsylvania State University. Her scholarship and praxis aim to work toward more sustainable, agrobiodiverse landscapes and, therein, more just communities, using “big” geospatial data and “deep” social livelihoods data as tools for community-engaged work. This includes recent work focused on processes of solar leasing and agrivoltaics in rural PA communities, as well as assessing crop diversity of US agricultural landscapes.