Beyond Acres: Optimizing Land Use for Ohio’s Energy Future

Kathiann Kowalski’s recent article, “In Ohio, solar is no big threat to farmland,” makes an important contribution to Ohio’s energy and land-use debate.¹

Using Solar Energy Industries Association data, Ohio-specific comparisons show that solar panels currently sit on less than 0.07% of Ohio’s prime farmland; golf courses occupy about 2.7 times as much Ohio land as solar generation facilities; and suburban sprawl from 2014 through 2024 consumed five times more farmland than solar.² These comparisons are useful, but they are incomplete. The more important question is how Ohio should optimize land use as renewable energy deployment accelerates and competition for productive land intensifies. Acreage comparisons alone do not tell us whether land remains functionally agricultural, how much soil is disturbed, or how easily the land can return to production.

Ohio needs a renewable-energy land stewardship framework — one that evaluates not just how many acres solar uses, but what kind of land is used, how much soil is disturbed, whether agriculture can continue, and whether the land can be returned to full productivity after decommissioning.

Acreage is not the same as future land-use strategy

Kowalski correctly places today’s solar footprint in context. But current acreage statistics answer only a current-acreage question. They do not tell us whether Ohio is building the right kind of solar, in the right places, using the right land-use standards.

Solar development is not distributed randomly across the landscape. Developers seek land with specific characteristics: relatively flat terrain, large contiguous parcels, road access, nearby transmission infrastructure, favorable interconnection opportunities, willing landowners, and workable permitting conditions. Those characteristics overlap with land that is valuable for agriculture.

That means the relevant comparison is not to “all farmland” or even “all prime farmland.” The more important comparison is the smaller subset of high-conflict farmland that is simultaneously:

• highly productive for agriculture;
• attractive for utility-scale solar development;
• near transmission or distribution infrastructure;
• available in large contiguous parcels;
• acceptable to local landowners and permitting authorities.

Once viewed through that lens, land-use planning becomes more complex than a statewide percentage suggests.

Golf courses and sprawl teach the opposite lesson

The article compares solar’s footprint with golf courses and suburban sprawl. That comparison is rhetorically effective, but the policy lesson should be drawn carefully.

Golf courses are a relatively mature land-use category. Current course openings have collapsed, falling from roughly 500 per year during the golf course boom to 24 per year today.^{3, 4, 5} Solar, by contrast, is entering a period of rapid expansion driven by data centers, EV adoption, broader electrification, and decarbonization goals. Comparing today’s solar acreage with the accumulated footprint of golf courses overstates the case for expanding solar on farmland.

Suburban sprawl is an even more important example. For decades, planners have recognized that poorly planned suburban expansion consumes farmland, fragments open space, increases infrastructure costs, and creates long-term burdens for communities. The policy response was not to say, “sprawl is small compared with all farmland, so there is no problem.” The response was Smart Growth: a planning framework for accommodating growth while reducing unnecessary land consumption and infrastructure costs.

Communities developed planning principles to encourage compact development, reuse of already-developed land, protection of farmland, better infrastructure planning, and more efficient land use. They did not stop development. They optimized it. That same principle should guide solar. Ohio does not need less energy development. It needs smarter energy development.

Ethanol comparisons strengthen the case for land-use optimization

Kowalski’s article also notes that a large share of Ohio corn is already used for energy through ethanol production, and that corn ethanol requires far more land per unit of energy than solar. That comparison is important. It shows that not all energy-producing land uses are equal. If Ohio wants to produce both food and energy, then land efficiency matters.

Solar can produce far more energy per acre than corn ethanol. That does not mean every solar project belongs on prime farmland. But it does mean Ohio should evaluate energy land uses based on performance, not emotion. The right policy question is not simply: “Should farmland be used for energy?” It already is. The better question is: “Which energy uses produce the most public value per acre while preserving the greatest long-term agricultural flexibility?” That question points toward land-use optimization, not blanket opposition.

Although corn grown for ethanol is far less energy-productive per acre than solar, it remains agronomically reversible: the same land can usually be shifted to food, feed, forage, or another rotation crop in the next planting season with little or no permanent land-use conversion.

Reversibility should be a core land-use metric

Solar development is generally more physically reversible than housing subdivisions, warehouses, roads, or shopping centers. But farmland preservation requires a higher standard than physical reversibility. It requires agronomic reversibility. Solar is physically reversible because the panels, racking, wiring, inverters, and foundations can be removed. But it is agronomically reversible only if the land can be restored to its prior agricultural productivity — including soil structure, drainage, topsoil condition, compaction levels, and long-term yield. A solar site can be physically cleared but still not be agronomically restored.

Solar construction involves heavy equipment, access roads, staging areas, trenching, driven piles, grading, drainage changes, and soil compaction. These impacts can be managed, reduced, and in many cases restored. But they should not be ignored. The question is not merely whether the equipment can be taken away after 30 or 40 years. The question is whether the land can return to productive agriculture, how quickly, at what cost, under what standards, and with what accountability. That is the standard Ohio should adopt.

Solar and agriculture need not be enemies

Sheep grazing, forage production, pollinator habitat, and agrivoltaic research can all help integrate energy production with agricultural or ecological value. That is exactly the direction Ohio should encourage. But “solar plus agriculture” should not be treated as a slogan. It should become a measurable standard. If a solar project claims agricultural compatibility, policymakers should ask:

• Will farming, grazing, or forage production occur on the site?
• Who is responsible for managing it?
• Is there an enforceable grazing, vegetation, or agrivoltaic plan?
• Are panel height, row spacing, racking design, and access lanes compatible with the claimed agricultural use?
• Will soil health be monitored?
• Will compaction and drainage impacts be measured before, during, and after construction?
• What happens if the agricultural component is abandoned?

Ohio needs better land-use metrics for solar

The current debate too often reduces solar siting to a binary choice: build solar on farmland or protect farmland from solar. That is the wrong framework. Ohio should evaluate solar projects using land-use performance metrics, including:

• acres used per megawatt;
• acres disturbed per megawatt;
• amount of prime farmland affected;
• soil productivity and drainage characteristics;
• degree of grading, trenching, compaction, and access-road construction;
• compatibility with continued farming, grazing, forage, or pollinator habitat;
• reversibility of the site after decommissioning;
• restoration standards for soil productivity;
• use of marginal, previously disturbed, or lower-productivity land where feasible;
• community acceptance;
• landowner participation;
• contribution to local tax base and grid reliability;
• preservation of future agricultural optionality.

These metrics would not prevent solar development. They would improve it. They would also give local officials a more constructive way to evaluate projects than simply asking whether a proposed site is “farmland” or “not farmland.”

The goal should be optimization, not obstruction

Ohio’s electricity demand is growing, driven by data centers, EV adoption, broader electrification, and industrial expansion, and solar is among the fastest electricity-generation resources to deploy.^{6, 7} At the same time, Ohio’s agricultural land is a strategic asset that must be managed carefully and protected for future generations.⁸ Productive farmland supports food security, rural economies, water management, ecological resilience, and flexibility in a changing climate.^{9, 10}

Ohio should not ban solar from farmland. Nor should it treat farmland as up for grabs for energy development. Instead, Ohio should build a land stewardship framework for renewable energy. Ohio's energy future should be measured not simply by how many megawatts we build, but by how wisely we use the land beneath them. State regulators, county governments, developers, and landowners should jointly develop these stewardship standards.

Author Bio

Don Scipione, Ph.D., is the founder of Roll-A-Rack, a Cleveland-based company developing solar racking technologies intended to reduce land disturbance and improve compatibility between renewable energy and agricultural land. Don previously worked as an elementary particle physicist, spent more than four decades developing optimization software systems, and served as chair of MidTown Cleveland, helping guide urban land assembly and redevelopment initiatives, including brownfield remediation issues.