The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it was trying to protect American farmland from solar development by putting new restrictions on a popular rural energy program.
Those changes are unlikely to stem losses to U.S. farmland, and they could hurt existing farm businesses that are barely staying afloat by restricting their ability to save on costs, experts warned.
The Department of Agriculture Rural Energy for America Program will no longer give guaranteed loans to solar farms on the ground that are over 50 kilowatts — which are a little bit larger than a tennis court, enough to power anywhere from a handful to a few dozen homes. The administration also won’t consider those projects as competitive in grant applications.