Washington, DC – Siting Solutions Project, in partnership with David E. Adelman, Harry Reasoner Regents Chair in Law at The University of Texas at Austin School of Law, released a new white paper titled A Win-Win Solution for Clean Energy Siting: State Policy Tools for Improving Community Outcomes, Providing Developer Certainty, and Accelerating Deployment.
The paper distills key insights from Adelman’s article Beyond Preemption: New Legal Strategies for Overcoming Local Opposition to Renewable Energy Projects and identifies best practices to earn community buy-in and accelerate the development of urgently needed clean energy projects.
Electricity demand is skyrocketing and utility prices are increasing. Local regulations and community opposition to constructing new clean energy projects have become substantial roadblocks to meeting America’s electricity demands and addressing energy affordability.
Siting Solutions Project and Adelman note that local opposition is primarily a product of structural policy failure, rooted in structural disincentives and constitutional constraints that prevent communities and developers from negotiating mutually beneficial agreements. This leads companies to conduct inadequate community engagement processes that leave residents feeling excluded from decisions that affect their lives.
Opposition to local clean energy is hardening. Columbia University’s Sabin Center identified 498 contested projects across 49 states in 2025, a 32% increase over the previous year. Meanwhile, according to USA Today, 20-24% of local governments have adopted restrictive zoning ordinances, moratoriums or bans on renewable energy development.
“Local opposition to clean energy projects is growing even though they bring significant economic benefits to communities, including hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment, significant tax revenue for counties and townships, and minimal demands on local infrastructure,” said Adelman. “Fortunately, effective legal tools exist to address these barriers to renewable development. State legislatures can adopt established frameworks and apply them to the renewable energy sector.”
The white paper identifies three policy levers that can be activated to empower local governments to secure benefits they seek, while reducing downstream permitting risk for developers. This will allow renewable energy projects to advance that are essential to meeting rising demand and reducing electricity prices. The policy levers are:
- Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOTs)—negotiated agreements that allow local property taxes to be traded for predictable, consistent payments that can be allocated in more flexible ways by a local government.
- Development Agreements—contractual frameworks that provide developers permitting certainty in exchange for tangible community benefits and customized siting requirements.
- Safety Net Model for Assigning Siting Authority—a policy framework for clean energy siting that preserves local control while preventing obstruction.
“State policymakers should enhance the size, desirability, and visibility of local benefits, strengthen community buy-in, neutralize local regulatory uncertainty, and accelerate development of badly needed clean energy projects,” said Nelson Falkenburg, co-author and Siting Policy Manager at the Siting Solutions Project. “Policymakers, developers, and community leaders all have a role to play in getting this right.”
Michigan’s 2023 renewable energy siting law is a useful template for laws in other states. The white paper also highlights Riverside County, California, where development agreements have helped the county rank second in solar capacity statewide.
This effort builds on the Siting Solutions Project’s Renewable Energy Siting Policy Field Guide, released in December 2025, which first introduced the Safety Net Model to a policy audience.
Read the full white paper here.
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About Siting Solutions Project
Siting Solutions Project is a nonpartisan, outcome-driven initiative advancing effective policies to deploy clean energy by conducting research and designing reforms in coalition that improve siting and permitting outcomes. Learn more at https://sitingsolutions.com/.