Competing Priorities for Oregon’s Land
Contributed by RNW Staff
Oregon is the nation’s ninth largest state geographically, but most land isn’t available for development. This is by design and a point of pride for most Oregonians. More than 50 years ago, Oregon adopted a collection of land use goals with the express purpose of protecting existing uses and landscapes and limiting sprawling development. And it’s largely worked; today, less than 2% of all land in Oregon is classified as developed. And 99% of land designated as Exclusive Farm Use (EFU) in 1987 has retained this status. (In our first post about agricultural land designations, we explain EFU and other agricultural land categories.) By these and many other measures, Oregon’s land use policies have been successful and limited development.
Meanwhile, since the late 1990s, Oregon began developing policies to protect clean air and water, support locally-produced energy, and reduce carbon emissions. These equally seminal laws mandate the use of renewable resources such as the sun and the wind, in addition to the state’s use of legacy hydroelectric power. These policies have been impactful as well; Oregon has built roughly 5,000 MW of utility-scale wind and solar generation since 1997. But when these energy goals were adopted, an awkward question was left undefined and undebated: where will these new energy projects be built?
This blog explains why these two policies – protect agricultural land and develop clean, renewable energy resources – often end in conflict. In our next post on this topic we will propose and discuss how both these policies can be successfully pursued.
Why Agricultural Land Works Well for Solar and Wind
The physical characteristics that make land suitable for farming often make it well-suited for solar and wind development, too. This is because land that has already been shaped by decades of intensive agricultural use — leveled, drained, fenced — arrives with much of the site preparation required for solar.
Farmland also offers key infrastructure advantages. Established agricultural operations have likely already attracted roads, power lines, and substations — transmission assets that significantly lower the cost and permitting complexity of connecting generation projects to the electric grid, which directly lowers the price of the energy for consumers.
Additionally, building on agricultural lands tends to have fewer conflicts with wildlife habitat and other environmental or cultural resources. All of these concerns are generally less acute on actively managed farmland than on undisturbed open land, reducing the timeline and uncertainty of development.
Finally, agricultural land is the single largest category of non-federal private land in Oregon, with approximately 15.6 million acres designated as Exclusive Farm Use (EFU) — just over 26% of the state's total land base.
All of this means that when utility-scale solar and wind projects need many acres of flat, cleared, transmission-adjacent land, agricultural lands are over-represented. Not because developers are choosing farms over better alternatives, but because agricultural land is very common and well-suited for the role of hosting renewable energy projects.
What About Alternatives?
It isn’t just that agricultural land has compatible features with renewable energy installations, it is also due to alternative sites being complicated to access. Federal land makes up the single largest category of land in Oregon with 33 million acres, or roughly 53% of total land in Oregon. But developing on federal land is notoriously difficult and time consuming because of long permitting processes that bring heightened risk of legal challenges, increased odds of overlapping native cultural resources, and the political risk of federal administrations that favor one form of energy over another. Even if these dynamics change in coming years, the advantages of agricultural land — flat, cleared, often nearer to existing transmission assets — will still exist.
Areas reserved for wildlife habitat, parks and scenic areas are not preferred for any development and widely considered inappropriate for siting energy projects. What about building on old industrial sites, rooftops, and parking lots? The short answer is that this is happening today and this kind of development will continue to expand. But building smaller solar energy systems — often referred to as distributed solar — is more expensive per unit of energy generated, even in areas where the amount of sunlight is the same, because smaller systems don’t enjoy the same economies of scale. In addition, as all Oregonians know, the sun doesn’t shine equally across the state and most rooftops and parking lots are in regions of the state with less sunshine.
Looking Forward
Oregonians have two important, value-based goals that appear to be in conflict — one is to preserve our agricultural heritage and lifestyle, and the other is to power our state with clean, energy mostly produced in Oregon. RNW is dedicated to respecting the deeply held values behind each of these policies while finding reasonable ways to achieve both.
We firmly believe needed development doesn't mean uncontrolled development, it doesn’t mean solar everywhere, and it doesn’t mean the end of rural Oregon as we know it. Wide open spaces, working landscapes, and energy independence aren't mutually exclusive. In our next post, we'll explore specific ideas for what this vision looks like.
