Nathaniel Swigart (J.D. 2025, North Carolina), Comment, Zero-Sum Environmentalism: Competing Tax Incentives for Solar Farms and Wildlife Conservation Land, 103 N.C. L. Rev. 803 (2025):

In a rush to woo solar companies into the state, North Carolina has enacted generous tax incentives for solar panels. While these tax incentives have resulted in North Carolina being among the vanguard of carbon-free energy producers, there are reasons to think that the generosity of these policies will ultimately do more harm than good to North Carolina’s ecosystems.

Large-scale solar farms now cover more than 35,000 acres in North Carolina. Every solar farm introduces toxic heavy metals to the environment, and many solar farms require heavy equipment to clear-cut vegetation and level the ground. Unlike other environmental tax incentives that influence how land in North Carolina is used and maintained, large-scale solar farms receive a tax break regardless of the amount of damage they do to ecosystems. To evaluate the ecological cost of solar farms in North Carolina, this Comment uses geographical information system data to explore trends in land being converted to solar farms. After demonstrating that solar farms are primarily built on land ideal for wildlife conservation, this Comment suggests how North Carolina could reform its solar panel tax incentives to reward the solar companies that take steps to decrease the ecological cost of solar farms. North Carolina tax policies favoring solar farms are pushing citizens away from behaviors that contribute to the direct preservation of ecosystems. Solar farms are built on land ideal for wildlife conservation, and there is currently no requirement that they be constructed and maintained in a manner that would decrease their environmental costs. North Carolina could significantly decrease the ecological costs of solar panels by making the property tax exclusion for solar property conditional on maintaining ecological standards like the WCLP, or by creating a graduated property tax exclusion that varies based on the ecological value of the location as determined by existing land classifications. Either of these proposals would make it clear that if North Carolina has a carbon-free future, it should not come at the expense of the ecosystems it is trying to protect.

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