Land-Use Barriers and Incentives to the Use of Solar Energy

The impact of land-use issues on solar technologies is analyzed and attention is focused specifically on a discussion of on-site uses of active and passive solar heating and cooling. The first area discussed involves land-use regulations which prohibit the installation of solar collectors. Such regulations include both public regulations (zoning laws) and private regulations (restrictive convenants). The widely discussed issue of secure access to sunlight, also known as solar rights, comprises the bulk of the report. The many different proposed methods of ensuring solar access are compared to an ideal solar right. The solar access problem is divided into two parts: access in new developments and access in existing neighborhoods. Solar access in new developments can be provided fairly easily, if desired, by a combination of land-use tools which allow for the flexible siting of buildings and restrictive convenants to control vegetation. The problem of access in existing neighborhoods does not lend itself to easy solutions. No proposals approximate the ideal. The main solutions analyzed-privately negotiated easements, zoning laws, and allocated sun rights, have drawbacks. The final area addressed is the variety of ways in which land-use regulations can be structured to provide an incentive to install solar equipment.