Testimony Before the Louisiana House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment
in Support of HB 615
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., Director
Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy
The Heartland Institute
April 23, 2025
Chairman Geymann, Vice-Chair Orgeron, and honorable committee members:
I am Dr. H. Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. I have worked on energy and environmental ethics, science, and policy issues full or part time for nearly 40 years and nearly 30 years on climate ethics, science, and policy issues.
I want to first thank the chairman and the Committee for allowing me to speak today concerning HB 615. For reference, I have filed my testimony at the committee’s email.
Chairman Geymann’s bill is a powerful and timely response to the threat industrial solar power poses. If enacted, this bill will help protect the state of Louisiana and the state’s taxpayers, ratepayers, and property owners from the high costs, power shortfalls, and environmental destruction wrought by intermittent, expensive, industrial solar power.
First, let me congratulate Louisiana for not following the herd and adopting a Renewable Portfolio Standard, which we at The Heartland Institute refer to as a renewable energy mandate. RPS’ are the gateway drug for ever increasing wind and solar power subsidies, loan guarantees, property rights violations and tax abatements, and the prime cause of rising electric power costs and electric power outages in the states and across the nation. Louisiana was right to avoid that trap, driven by the lie of a pending catastrophic human caused climate change.
Proponents of renewable energy tout it as part of a multi-layered energy strategy – “all of the above.” We at Heartland don’t support all of the above, we support all that makes sense and what makes sense is an electric power system that is affordable, reliable, and clean. Heartland has just finished a report Affordable, Reliable, and Clean: An Objective Scorecard to Assess Competing Energy Sources,” detailing the fact that solar power fails on all three of those metrics, being the most expensive and tied for the least reliable source of electric power generation, and, on an all things considered environmental basis, solar power is not even clean.
Even if one believes that humans are causing a climate crisis, a belief that is belied by the available evidence–hard data–making Louisiana’s electric power system less reliable, while increasing its costs and detrimentally impacting the state’s farmland productivity, by allowing the whole scale expansion of solar power there will have no impact on climate change, which, by its very nature, is a global problem of which greenhouse gas emissions from Louisiana’s energy sector are a negligible part. In short, there is no good justification of expanding industrial solar power in Louisiana or elsewhere, other than the profits it reaps for its owner/operators, almost solely the result of government subsidies and regulatory support.
Enough of generalities. The Heartland Institute recently produced a report, titled “How States Can Push Back Against the Destructive Expansion of Industrial Solar Power,” detailing the various drawbacks of grid scale solar power and steps to prevent those harms.
On a Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity basis, accounting for subsidies and the costs of other power sources needed to backup, supplement, and regulate solar power, it is the most expensive source of electric power – 10 times more expensive than natural gas on a megawatt hour basis, and greater than four times more expensive than coal.
Solar power is, by its nature, intermittent. It doesn’t generate power at night, minimal power on overcast or rainy days, of which Louisiana has more than its share, and delivers variable or fluctuating power to the grid on partly cloudy days, a supply that must be regulated by other power sources to keep the grid stable and in balance between supply and demand.
We explain that industrial solar facilities destroy both wildlife habitat and productive farmland alike. Grid scale solar kills wildlife both directly and indirectly. Habitat conversion is the biggest killer of wildlife and industrial solar requires approximately 60 square miles of solar panels to produce same amount of power as a conventional power plant, even with mining and transmission is accounted for.
This brings us to concerns about farmland. A recent study that I co-authored reported that:
Because hundreds or even thousands of acres are required for each project, most industrial solar facilities are built on agricultural land. This is often an attractive arrangement for landowners, as solar companies offer leases that are well above average property rental rates.
A recent study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that 70 percent of solar facilities constructed from 2009 to 2020 were installed on agricultural land—either cropland or rangeland. A 2022 study by the American Farmland Trust found that 83 percent of new solar energy development will be on farmland or rangeland, with “almost 50% placed on the most productive, versatile, and resilient land.”
As more productive farmland is converted for this purpose, local farming communities could be devastated, and overall food production and security could be threatened. Moreover, there is significant evidence that industrial solar projects harm the land they are situated upon by damaging the rich soil crucial for crop production.
As if that is not enough industrial solar facilities create huge end-of-life waste problems, are dependent upon child and slave labor and, as the market is currently configured, puts the United States at the mercy of China for critical minerals, metal, components, and finished products. Is it really a good idea for the United States to be beholden to China for its energy security when we have a secure, abundant supply of fossil fuels and uranium?
Among the steps we recommend state lawmakers take to limit the impact industrial solar has on their electric power system, their residents, and their businesses are:
- Eliminate Special Financial Incentives for Solar Development;
- Tax Farmland Used for Industrial Solar at the Rate Industrial Facilities Are Taxed;
- Enact Strong Anti-ESG Policies
- Prohibit the Procurement of Solar Energy Sourced Through Child or Slave Labor;
- Prevent Preferential Permitting and Imposing Siting Requirements; and
- Mandating Decommissioning and Disposal Plans Complete with Bonding Requirements or other Financial Guarantees of Responsibility.
To Rep. Geymann’s credit the bill he produced, HB 615, is tailored specifically “to provide for a coordinated statewide program and comprehensive set of standards for the regulation of large-scale solar energy development in order to balance the state’s energy needs and economic development with the state’s constitutional responsibility to protect, conserve, and replenish the natural resources of the state and the healthful, scenic, historic, and esthetic quality of the environment consistent with the health, safety, and welfare of the people.” Protecting the people and the environment from increased industrial solar is critical to meeting those stated goals.
The “notice” requirements in the bill and its provisions preventing nuisance and upholding local zoning control defend towns and property owners against powerful corporate interests and ensure transparency in the approval process, preventing preferential environmental review, siting, and approval conditions.
The bill provides strong surety conditions to ensure the proper, non-environmentally harmful, disposal of solar panels and associated waste upon the facilities end of life. This protects landowners from potentially toxic pollution, and the state from the cost of disposal or storage, in particular at municipal waste facilities, which already struggle with limited space and which may not be qualified to contain any toxins leaching from the broken or decommissioned panels. In addition, the bill provides for the land to be restored to useful conditions. This latter condition is similar to the requirement faced by coal mines to reclaim the land they mined at the end of their useful life.
HB 615’s requirements that solar developers seek permits from the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries should help minimize the impact of any industrial solar development on the state’s valuable natural resources: its lands and wildlife. The bill also contains provisions which should minimize the conversion and long-term loss of valuable farmland.
The set back provisions of the bill should minimize any nuisance to surrounding property owners. If those conditions prove to onerous to a solar developer, HB 615 provides for the possibility of for a waiver based on the agreement of the potentially affected property owners in a parish. This seems a fair acknowledgment of their concern and respects the local control of parishes.
In summary, expanding industrial solar power in Louisiana serves no useful purpose. It will result in higher costs for ratepayers and taxpayers, will likely compromise grid reliability, and will have no beneficial environmental impact, rather it will likely result in environmental harm. Most of the jobs it creates will be temporary while the costs imposed last for decades. This bill, while not banning solar outright, which would raise property rights concerns, sets proper limits and boundaries on solar energy development.
Thank you for your time and attention. I’m available for any questions you might have now or in the hours and days after the hearing.
Heartland Impact can send an expert to your state to testify or brief your caucus; host an event in your state; or send you further information on a topic. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if we can be of assistance! If you have any questions or comments, contact Cameron Sholty, at csholty@heartlandimpact.org or 312/377-4000.
