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

Acreage is not the same as future land-use strategy

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. Developers seek 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.

The relevant comparison is the smaller subset of high-conflict farmland that is simultaneously productive, attractive for utility-scale solar, near grid infrastructure, available in large parcels, and acceptable to landowners and permitting authorities. Viewed through that lens, land-use planning becomes more complex than a statewide percentage suggests.

Golf courses and sprawl teach the opposite lesson

Golf courses are a mature land-use category: current course openings have collapsed from roughly 500 per year during the golf boom to about 24 per year. 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 can overstate the case for expanding solar on farmland.

Suburban sprawl is the more important example. Planners did not dismiss its effects because sprawl occupied only a small share of all farmland. They developed Smart Growth—a framework that accommodates growth while reducing unnecessary land consumption and infrastructure costs. They did not stop development. They optimized it. That same principle should guide solar.

Ethanol strengthens the case for optimization

A large share of Ohio corn is already used for energy through ethanol production, which requires far more land per unit of energy than solar. If Ohio wants to produce both food and energy, land efficiency matters.

The right question is not simply whether farmland should 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. Corn grown for ethanol is less energy-productive per acre, but remains agronomically reversible: the same land can usually shift to food, feed, forage, or another rotation crop in the next season.

Reversibility should be a core land-use metric

Solar is generally more physically reversible than housing subdivisions, warehouses, roads, or shopping centers. But farmland preservation requires a higher standard: agronomic reversibility. Panels and foundations can be removed; restoring soil structure, drainage, topsoil, compaction levels, and long-term yield is a different test.

Heavy equipment, access roads, staging areas, trenching, driven piles, grading, drainage changes, and compaction can be managed and restored. The question is whether the land can return to productive agriculture, how quickly, at what cost, under what standards, and with what accountability.

Solar and agriculture need not be enemies

Sheep grazing, forage production, pollinator habitat, and agrivoltaic research can integrate energy production with agricultural or ecological value. But “solar plus agriculture” should become a measurable standard, not a slogan.

• Will farming, grazing, or forage production actually occur on the site?
• Are panel height, row spacing, racking design, and access lanes compatible with that use?
• Will soil health, compaction, and drainage be measured before, during, and after construction?
• Who is responsible, and what happens if the agricultural component is abandoned?

Better metrics for Ohio solar

The debate too often becomes a binary choice: build solar on farmland or protect farmland from solar. A performance framework would give local officials a more constructive way to evaluate projects.

• Acres used and acres disturbed per megawatt
• Prime farmland, soil productivity, and drainage affected
• Grading, trenching, compaction, and access-road construction
• Compatibility with farming, grazing, forage, or pollinator habitat
• Agronomic restoration standards and future agricultural optionality
• Use of marginal, previously disturbed, or lower-productivity land where feasible
• Community acceptance, landowner participation, tax base, and grid reliability

The goal is optimization, not obstruction

Ohio’s electricity demand is growing, and solar is among the fastest generation resources to deploy. At the same time, productive farmland supports food security, rural economies, water management, ecological resilience, and flexibility in a changing climate.

Ohio should neither ban solar from farmland nor treat farmland as up for grabs. State regulators, county governments, developers, and landowners should jointly build a land-stewardship framework for renewable energy—one that measures not only how many megawatts we build, but how wisely we use the land beneath them.