On February 10, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic Butchko submitted written testimony to the Environment and Transportation Committee in support of HB 460 – Solar Energy – Construction of Generating Stations in Priority Preservation Areas and Study.
This bill recalibrates guardrails within the Renewable Energy Certainty Act (RECA) of 2025 to better ensure that agricultural land within a county’s Priority Preservation Areas (PPAs) remains in productive agricultural use.
One of the most significant—and deeply debated—issues during the 2025 session was how to balance protecting agricultural lands with the state’s push to expand solar generation. After extensive debate, the General Assembly set a compromise cap by allowing solar on up to 5% of land within Priority Preservation Areas.
That decision left a central unresolved question—because farmland, once converted, is effectively impossible to replace: whether 5% is simply too much, particularly given it could total hundreds of thousands of acres statewide. HB 460 is intended to focus the debate on that singular, high-impact issue.
HB 460 would reduce the cap from five percent to two
percent. Counties estimate that this adjustment would reduce the solar-eligible acreage within PPAs by roughly one-third to one-half, depending on the county. Even with this refinement, Maryland retains ample opportunity to meet its renewable energy targets both with PPAs and through other locations — such as land outside PPAs, underutilized rights-of-way, roadway and utility corridors, parking lots, rooftops, and other disturbed or built environments—without placing disproportionate pressure on Maryland’s most valuable agricultural preservation lands.
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