Solar Land Rush: Rural New York

Solar land rush: Renewable energy, rural areas, and landscape change

Science Direct | J. Keblinski

August 2026

Abstract

Large-scale renewable energy development is reshaping rural landscapes, raising important questions about land use, governance, and distributional justice in the context of decarbonization. In New York State, ambitious climate targets have accelerated the construction of large-scale solar projects. These projects are often built on previously agricultural lands in regions experiencing demographic and agrarian decline. This paper examines how large-scale solar projects transform rural landscapes in Cortland County, New York. The paper uses three political ecology frameworks to inform its analysis: ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs), green grabbing, and green extractivism. Drawing on human geography's tradition of landscape interpretation, this study combines semi-structured interviews, documentary analysis, aerial imagery, and field photography to analyze the social and ecological impacts of solar-driven land-use change. The analysis is guided by an abductive approach grounded in the frameworks listed above, but open to findings that strain or challenge the selected frameworks. Findings show that solar development in Cortland County is characterized by governance at a distance, limited local economic linkages, and the localization of ecological burdens such as stormwater erosion and deforestation. Farmland and rural open space are re-valued as energy assets, reshaping local land imaginaries and provoking a range of affective responses marked by ambivalence and distrust. Each of the chosen frameworks helps highlight different elements of the process, demonstrating the respective strengths of the analytical lenses used. By mobilizing landscape interpretation, this paper contributes both a situated account of so-called energy transition and a theoretically informed reflection on existing political ecology concepts.

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