Rural counties have been trying to ban renewable-energy projects, so Illinois and Calif. legislatures banned the bans

Solar panels in Illinois (Photo by Youngrae Kim, The Washington Post)

Rural Illinois has long stretches of flat land, ideal for installing solar and wind projects, but not all rural residents want those projects; some local governments moved to ban them. "Two years ago, Illinois had adopted a landmark clean-energy law that called for building vast amounts of renewable power," reports Dan Gearino and Aydali Campa of Inside Climate News. "At the same time, 15 counties with some of the most land available for wind and solar had passed, or were about to pass, restrictions on new development that made the state’s goals more difficult to reach."

"Something had to give," ICN reports. "That something came last month, when Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed HB 4412 that took away the ability of local governments to limit or ban wind and solar power, a measure that follows similar actions in California and New York. . . . Now, officials from places that had restricted development of renewables projects — like Ford County, located in the rural area between Chicago and Champaign-Urbana — are livid about what they view as a power grab by majority Democrats."

Clean-energy advocates said the law was necessary because rural counties were not relying on fact-based research when vetoing renewable projects, ICN notes. "While there is agreement that rural resistance to wind and solar is an impediment to development," ICN writes. "Experts disagree about whether it’s a good idea to deal with this opposition by yanking power away from local officials." Sarah Mills, a University of Michigan renewable-energy-conflicts writer, told ICN, "This is not the way you build bridges between urban and rural areas. It’s making that chasm even wider.”

Jen Walling is executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council. "She said some county requirements were so restrictive that they were essentially bans on clean energy developments," reports Tim Shelley of WCBU in Peoria, Illinois. Walling told Shelley, "A number of these counties weren't representing their constituents and were taking away individual property rights."

Like Illinois, California has stretches of open land primed for renewables, but counties often said, "No, thank you." California's Gov. Gavin Newsom got his legislature to ban the bans, reports Julie Cart of CalMatters. Alex Jackson, director of California state affairs for American Clean Power, an association of renewable-energy companies, told Cart, "In general we work really well with local government. We have invested a lot in those relationships. We prefer to work with them rather than strong-arm them. Overall we don’t see this as unlocking the path to accelerating clean energy.”

ICN reports, "Kevin Semlow, Illinois Farm Bureau’s director of state legislation, said his larger concern isn’t about the loss of local control; it’s about how the law seems to occupy an uncomfortable middle ground between local and state control, with counties remaining in charge but severely limited in what they can do." Semlow asked ICN, "Since you’re basically having a statewide system, why don’t you have a statewide agency that would be over it, so there’s just more cohesiveness and uniformity?"