Solar: It's a Land-Based Business

A successful solar project has as much to do with the land beneath your feet as it does with the sun. Whether you’ve always dreamed of ranching wide open spaces or you have stress dreams about the thousands of acres in your portfolio, you need a land management plan that pulls from the cutting edge. Understanding the value of land stewardship is critical, and the right ethos can ensure every leaseholder will become a project ally and supporter. I will bring the audience through the solar project life cycle, highlighting key points where land management practices, and how you communicate them, can make or break a project. I’ll also share several key points on how solar grazing can be successfully executed, including key vetting tips and things to watch out for. This talk will be broad enough for audiences from all regions of the United States, and appropriate for both community and utility scale solar professionals. The talk will highlight resources from relevant and influential groups such as ACP, Uncommon Dialogue (forthcoming), and the American Solar Grazing Association. I’ll close with my take on where our industry is heading based on lessons learned from my experience at Lightsource bp, where we managed over 4 GW of capacity and 3 GW of solar grazing in 2025 while developing capacity for pollinator friendly, grazing friendly and mowing-only gigawatts of solar.