Renewable Energy and the Neighbors

As the popularity of small wind turbines and solar panels continues to grow, neighborhood conflicts over the devices will become increasingly common. Despite state and federal programs that aggressively encourage landowners to invest in distributed renewable energy systems, local land use laws often deter their installation. A growing number of states have enacted statutes that sweepingly invalidate land use restrictions on distributed renewables. These broadbrush preemption laws tear down local barriers to installing the devices, but they also undermine communities’ land use authority and inefficiently ignore local issues and concerns.