"PERRY, Ga. -- Hunters, botanists, residents worried about water quality and people citing Scripture lined up to oppose the installation of 2,100 acres of solar panels next to a wildlife preserve.
But it was the plight of the local black bears that doomed the proposal from Silicon Ranch, one of the South's largest solar operators.
The 300 or so bears that roam the Oaky Woods Wildlife Management Area and adjacent timberland are already so hemmed in by highways and development that they are inbreeding and born missing ears and tails and with odd numbers of testicles.
Silicon Ranch said it would keep more than half of the roughly 4,700-acre property free of solar panels and leave wildlife corridors between the arrays, which would generate enough electricity for about 50,000 homes. Houston County commissioners were unswayed and withheld a zoning permit for the $300 million project last year.
Silicon Ranch rolled up its blueprints and went scouting for other locations.
It was a reception much different from when the Nashville, Tenn., company arrived in 2020 to build a 705-acre solar farm along Interstate 75 south of the county seat, said Chief Executive Reagan Farr. The solar farm, built on freshly logged timberland, was hailed as a shining example of rural economic development. "We were met with open arms," he said.
Solar farms have proliferated across the South, replacing swaths of timber and enriching land owners who struggled with two decades of depressed log prices. Lately, though, solar developers are encountering obstacles -- and not just bears.
Souring sentiment
Sentiment regarding renewable energy has soured. President Trump spent much of this term dismantling his predecessor's efforts to foster renewable-energy development in favor of fossil fuels.
Trump temporarily stopped work on a big wind project off New York's coast to force state officials to reconsider left-for-dead gas-pipeline proposals he promised to revive. His tax-and-spending bill making its way through Congress would end incentives for residential solar projects and phase out those for larger arrays by 2028, instead of 2031.
Meanwhile, local opposition has welled up over tax abatements, aesthetics, erosion and future cleanup obligations.
Farr said Americans used to mainly be concerned with the cost and reliability of electricity. Now, they fight over how it is produced. "It's become politicized," he said.
Southeast of Perry, in Pulaski County, a 2,800-acre array stalled because an economic-development board refused the developer a tax break. County employees calculated that the abatement would shortchange taxpayers after the expense of making dirt roads passable for construction equipment.
To the southwest, a federal jury awarded a couple $135.5 million after runoff from another Silicon Ranch project muddied their fishing lake. A federal judge overruled the damages amount, and the parties settled in January -- yet the jury made clear how rural Georgians feel about solar farms.
Rising demand
Many of the brightest spots in the U.S. economy and the stock market, including artificial intelligence, data-center construction and electric vehicles, depend on a rising supply of electricity. Solar panels are expected to contribute much of it.
The Energy Information Administration forecasts that solar-generation capacity will eclipse that of coal midway through next year and blow past wind power by the end of 2026. By then, solar panels will produce about 8% of U.S. electricity, up from 5% last year, the EIA estimates.
"Solar is the lowest-cost, quickest form of generation you can bring to the grid," Farr said. "The only real constraints on the growth are transmission systems and the industry's social license to operate."
The Southern solar boom began in Texas and Florida and then spread. The Southeast has sunshine, flat land and large landowners looking for ways to make money besides growing pine trees.
Millions of acres from Virginia to Florida and west to Texas were planted with pine in the 1980s, when crashing crop prices prompted the government to pay Southern landowners to grow wood for mills instead. A glut of pine was ready to cut when the housing market crashed in 2008, and prices for logs have been depressed ever since, languishing no matter how high lumber prices climb.
University of Georgia researchers found that solar leases pay nearly 10 times more than raising loblolly on even a few acres.
"It's consistent income for a very long time," said Puneet Dwivedi, one of the researchers and now professor of sustainable forest management at Clemson University. "Landowners don't have to lift a finger."
That appealed to Helen Livingston, who leased 44 acres near Maxton, N.C., to a solar developer in 2012. "There's nothing to do except collect the check," she said.
Solar-farm growth
Solar farms have become much larger since then. That has been Trump's gripe.
"You know what else people don't like?" Trump said in a Fox News interview after his inauguration. "Those massive solar fields built over land that cover 10 miles by 10 miles. They're ridiculous."
None in the U.S. is that big, yet the space needed to accommodate the projected gains in solar generation is enormous.
The timberland company Rayonier estimates that solar developers will need as much as 250,000 more acres annually over the next five years. A 583-acre solar farm opened on its land in 2023, in Texas, and developers have options on another 39,000 acres. Weyerhaeuser, the largest private U.S. landowner, has leases or options for about 70 solar projects covering roughly 130,000 acres.
Many options will never convert to leases, but those that do will be lucrative.
Rayonier's southern land produced about $80 an acre of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization last year growing pine trees, CEO Mark McHugh said.
Solar leases generate between $800 and $1,200 an acre, he said. When solar developers buy land, they usually pay five times the timberland value.
Bear country
The timberland that Silicon Ranch wanted to buy and develop near Perry was long managed as part of the adjacent wildlife preserve. Much of the property was logged to make way for solar panels.
The bears, for which an area high-school football team is named, were a concern from the start. Ben Carr, a graduate student at the University of Georgia who studies them, said bears can coexist with timber operations, denning in the slash piles left by loggers and feeding on the blackberries that sprout. He presented research at public meetings showing how development reduced their range and pushed sows and their cubs from familiar territory.
He described the deformities turning up due to genetic isolation. "Those are warning signs," Carr said.
Farr, the Silicon Ranch CEO, said he regrets not engaging more with locals to discuss how the company would protect wildlife and blend agriculture with energy production.” [1]
Bears have testicles too. That's unexpected.
1. South Rethinks Swapping Pines for Solar --- Renewable energy comes at a cost, stirs opposition in areas known for timber. Dezember, Ryan. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 02 June 2025: B4.
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