This article is part of the series “Power Struggle: Building Clean Energy in Rural America.”

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Photography by Anna Watts

LOWELL, Vt. — Doug Manning built his three-story home for the views. Mountain peaks ring the 800-person town of Lowell, and just beyond his back porch stretches a hayfield that the community uses as a kind of public square. The 44-acre open space hosts carnivals, sledders, and snowmobilers in the winter, and hikers and firework displays in the summer. Lowell’s only school and its town clerk’s office sit across the street.

Now, that parcel could undergo a transformation, from rolling pasture to nearly 5 megawatts of solar panels.

The local farm family that owns the property has been in the process of selling it to Northland Solar since last year. The developer, which is gathering permits, has said it wants to start construction by July so it can meet the Trump administration’s shortened deadlines for federal incentives. The array could power about 1,500 homes, helping Vermont meet rising energy demand without burning more fossil fuels. By some standards, this is a great site for it, given that the plot is largely flat, is next to a road, and borders a substation for easy connection to the grid.

But there’s a hitch: Many residents staunchly oppose the project.

The town’s select board — its elected governing body — has teamed up with Manning, two other neighbors, the nearby school, and a cemetery to intervene in the permitting case before the state’s Public Utility Commission, asking the regulators to deny approvals. While loss of farmland factors in, the group’s main concern is that the installation will be an eyesore and overtake a community space.

“I struggled with the idea of opposing it, because I’ve built these things,” said Manning, a master electrician who helped construct large solar projects across the state and has enough solar on his own roof to zero out his electric bill. ​“But it’s going to completely destroy the view for the house.”

Similar debates are playing out in communities across the country, as local pushback against renewable energy grows. At least 498 renewable energy projects were contested in 49 states at the end of 2024, a 32% increase from the year before, according to the most recent figures from Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. But unlike backlash in states with weaker climate policies, resistance in progressive Vermont is crashing into some of the nation’s most ambitious state-level renewable energy goals.

In fact, Lowell itself has previously welcomed renewable energy development. In 2010, residents voted in favor of building more than 20 wind turbines atop a nearby ridgeline after being promised cuts to ever-increasing property taxes. People who approved the wind project are fighting the solar farm, with some pointing out that it won’t generate as much tax revenue.

“We’re not against renewable energy,” said Mike Tetreault, a Lowell resident who is among that cohort.

The tension in Lowell speaks to a bigger question facing Vermont: How can the state accomplish the clean energy buildout it says it wants if communities refuse to host the infrastructure?

“No question, like everyone else, we’re capable of acting like raging hypocrites,” said Kerrick Johnson, commissioner of the Vermont Public Service Department, the state advocate for utility customers. ​“We want solar, we want to be able to do it — but not look at it here.”

Utility-scale solar, one of the cheapest and quickest forms of power generation to build, isn’t just a lever to bring down electricity prices. It’s also key for Vermont’s quest to fight climate change, which poses myriad threats to the state: more devastating floods, intensified drought, a shorter ski season, the erasure of iconic wildlife like the common loon, and a supercharging of disease-carrying ticks and mosquitoes.

Under the state’s renewable energy standard, enacted in 2017 and updated in 2024, many utilities must transition to 100% renewable power by 2030. Renewable energy, including credits, accounted for roughly 75% of the state’s electricity generation in 2024.

Vermont already has 139 solar arrays of up to 5 MW each and one 20-MW array, according to the state’s Public Service Department. But more is needed, according to Peter Sterling, executive director of the trade group Renewable Energy Vermont. The state must build 60 to 80 megawatts of solar annually over the next four years to meet its goals, he said. (Vermont’s Public Service Department said this number is closer to 42 to 50 MW on average to meet the state’s renewable energy target.) Sterling added that leaning on polluting, out-of-state gas plants for power — as Vermont does now — is ​“the height of environmental discrimination” if residents refuse to allow energy development in their own communities.

In the last decade, as Vermont has ramped up its clean energy ambitions, solar and wind companies and their lobbying associations have become a dominant force in the statehouse. Renewable energy has surpassed the ski industry as the most successful business in Vermont, the Public Service Department’s Johnson said — and that’s brought a shift in the public’s attitude toward it.

“Vermonters were incredibly supportive even when [renewable energy] was pejoratively described as boutiquey,” Johnson said. ​“And then it became a real business.”

Many people across the country oppose solar because they worry it will gobble up farmland. That argument has gained some steam in Vermont: During the state’s 2026 legislative session, Republican lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled House and Senate introduced bills that would ban solar on more than 5 acres of ​“primary agricultural soils,” a federally defined term for land with good enough conditions to produce high-yield crops. Such land makes up about one-sixth of Vermont’s 6 million acres. The proposed legislation would basically block more than 1 MW of solar from being built on any property that meets that definition.

The threat of losing that resource is very real: If recent trends continue, development is expected to overtake 41,200 acres of Vermont’s farmland between 2016 and 2040, according to modeling by the lobbying group American Farmland Trust. But the vast majority of that loss — 97% — will be thanks to housing and commercial construction, not solar, according to a letter Sterling sent the state legislature.

Still, Rep. Greg Burtt, who sponsored the House bill, said that the state should push developers to already industrialized landscapes, like parking lots or Walmart rooftops. But that approach involves trade-offs, too.

“If we could build rooftop projects at the same cost as ground-mounted, I would be all for it,” said Thomas Hand, who heads Northland Solar, the firm developing the contested Lowell solar project. He noted that rooftop projects can cost 50% more than traditional solar projects, and parking lot arrays can cost double. ​“Rooftop and carport systems simply cost more, and that means the power is more expensive.”

Hand, a Vermont native who now lives in Oregon, is unsurprisingly among the opponents of Burtt’s bill and its Senate counterpart. At a February Senate committee hearing, he argued that ​“primary agricultural soils” is a catch-all term for a vast amount of area, some of which farmers may not even want to use. The Lowell plot technically falls under that definition — meaning Hand’s project would be blocked if the proposed regulations became law.

He also equated the restrictions to ​“lighting money on fire” for farmers.

“If this legislation passes, it’s going to directly harm farm families,” Hand said. He testified that farmers leasing their land to his company, which operates about 60 MW of solar in Vermont, generate annual incomes of up to $30,000. ​“You might not like their choice, but it’s not your land, it’s their land. They should be allowed to choose what to do with it.”

Ultimately, it seems neither measure seeking to bar solar on farmland will pass this session, which will likely end in June. The Senate dropped the section of its bill that would have restricted solar, and the House version has languished in committee for several months.

Even so, concerns about renewables taking up farmland aren’t going away in Vermont or elsewhere. Local renewable energy bans fueled by the argument have sprung up in states such as Ohio, and the Trump administration has blocked funding for solar on what it describes as ​“productive farmland.”

Climate activist, writer, and longtime Vermonter Bill McKibben vehemently disagrees with the notion that solar development and agriculture are at odds with each other.

“The farmland argument is wrong,” McKibben said. ​“Clean electrons are a valuable crop we use lots of, and produce too little of (unlike, say, milk).” Agriculture is not innocent when it comes to land use, he noted, polluting soils with nitrogen and phosphorus that are ​“doing billion-dollar damage” to Vermont’s Lake Champlain.

He also pointed to the success of agrivoltaics, in which certain crops or animals such as sheep thrive on fields shaded by solar panels.

“If you care about the future of agriculture on this planet,” he added, ​“you should be focused on driving down carbon emissions so we will still be able to grow things.”

Back in Lowell, on a rainy April day, Tetreault sat at his kitchen table and reminisced about the history of the hayfield Northland wants to build on — and what could’ve been.

Currently a senior vice president for Vermont feed provider Poulin Grain, Tetreault grew up on a now-defunct dairy across the street from the plot. Over the last few decades, he and his wife, Pam, have bought up properties in town to diversify their income, planting Christmas trees and pumpkins and operating a small farm stand. In 2023, they tried to purchase the hayfield from the Raboin family, whose patriarch, Robert, had recently died. They intended to keep the land agricultural, starting with growing hay and possibly expanding their Christmas tree or farm stand.

But the couple, who offered $165,000, couldn’t compete with the solar company’s undisclosed offer, which Tetreault claimed was about $280,000. Hand said he wouldn’t specify the amount of his offer, but noted the land was publicly listed for $250,000.

Both Tetreault and Manning described the Raboin family, who are selling the property, as very good people. Robert’s wife, Rita, still lives in a yellow house down the road. A Raboin family member at the home declined to comment for this story.

“The people that are opposed to this want the Raboins to get the best they can for their property,” Manning said. ​“Nobody feels like they’re doing this out of anything but concern for the immediate community.” Like Tetreault, Manning voted in 2010 in favor of the 63-MW Kingdom Community Wind project, which overlooks the town.

Tetreault said he was willing to sacrifice some aesthetics back then, and saw the financial benefits: He and his wife saved roughly $9,000 in property taxes last year thanks to the wind project’s annual payments to Lowell, which VTDigger reported totaled about $600,000 in 2025. The solar farm, meanwhile, will pay only about $20,000 in state property taxes per year, plus a smaller amount in municipal taxes, according to Hand’s testimony to the Public Utility Commission.

The wind proposal was also distinguished by the fact that Green Mountain Power, the utility backing the installation, promised to pull out if residents voted against the project.

“Green Mountain Power bent over backwards to communicate to the community what was going to happen,” holding multiple meetings and community discussions, Manning said.

The town’s select board could call for a similar vote on the solar project, but it wouldn’t be binding, Manning said, since energy-permitting decisions happen at the state level. Lowell Select Board Chair Jennifer Blay, who declined to comment for this story, told the state legislature that the town didn’t hold a referendum on the solar development because she didn’t want to pit neighbor against neighbor.

But the town did hold a vote on whether to spend $50,000 on a lawyer to help fight the project. The result was a tie, 86–86, with a single ballot that would have tipped the result toward paying the lawyer struck as faulty. In the end, VTDigger reports, officials found unallocated funds in the budget to hire an attorney to help it navigate intervening in the Public Utility Commission case.

“Some people believe in solar, but they don’t want to see it there,” said Sonja Blodgett, a paraprofessional at the nearby school who opposes the array. ​“We already gave up our mountains.” Blodgett is yet another resident who voted for the wind turbines but against the solar farm. She worries the development would ruin the view, create disruptive noise during construction and maintenance, and harm local waterways and grasslands — concerns that the school and town select board echo in testimony to regulators. The testimony does not cite any concrete evidence backing up claims that the installation will result in environmental damage beyond the project site.

Blodgett wants to know why the solar couldn’t be situated on the shuttered asbestos mine that rises like a massive gray mountain north of town. But Lowell prohibits development on the property or disturbance of the soils, which would cause carcinogenic asbestos to enter the air and pose health threats. Hand said that the lack of power lines to the area would necessitate building new electric infrastructure, increasing costs for customers.

The developer says he would have liked to pick a less controversial location. Ideally, ​“it would be totally hidden from view, and no one would ever see any of it,” he said. ​“But it’s Vermont. If you need to be near roads, flat land, not have trees, near electrical infrastructure, then it’s going to be visible from somewhere.”

Soon, the fate of the parcel will be decided, with the Public Utility Commission expected to rule on permits before summer. (A spokesperson said the agency could not comment on a specific project or pending case.)

But already, the Lowell project has had knock-on effects: At least one property owner, Laurel Appleton Griffin, sold her bed-and-breakfast after hearing about the solar development, which would border her flower farm behind the inn.

“We were devastated to learn about the surrounding Raboin farm property being sold to the solar company as it would vastly change so much about our own property and livelihood,” Griffin, who once considered the property her ​“forever home,” said in an email. She added that while she and her husband ​“absolutely support clean energy and applaud solar arrays being used in appropriate locations,” she couldn’t stand watching the destruction of prime growing land and the town center.

The bed-and-breakfast changed hands to Damien Walker, who moved from Arizona to Vermont in November. The 48-year-old relocated from his notoriously hot, dry hometown of Phoenix in part because he felt Vermont was a safer place to confront climate change, which is driven by the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.

“Arizona’s going to run out of water in the next two decades,” he said.

Walker was warned about the solar project before he bought the property. But he has a much different perspective on it than the previous owner does, mostly seeing the energy resilience benefits of living next to a power plant and substation.

“It’s not the worst thing in the world to be in proximity to a big electrical generator,” Walker said. ​“There are definitely worse things.”

Austyn Gaffney

is a reporter covering climate, energy, and agriculture. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and other publications. Originally from Canada, she currently lives in Kentucky.