Wind and Solar Leasing in Posey County, Indiana

A real ordinance, with specific setback and buffer rules

Posey County adopted a Solar and Wind Ordinance covering unincorporated territory that sets out real, specific siting rules rather than leaving commercial renewable development to case-by-case negotiation. Under the ordinance, solar panels must be set back at least 300 feet from a home's foundation or 100 feet from a property line, whichever distance is greater, and a 6-foot vegetative tree buffer is required between panels and neighboring properties. The ordinance also bans industrial-scale solar development within 500 feet of a school. These are concrete, checkable numbers -- worth comparing directly against any specific lease proposal's site plan rather than assuming a developer's default layout already complies.

For a landowner evaluating a lease offer, these setback and buffer requirements affect how much of your acreage can actually host panels once you subtract the required distance from every neighboring property line, home, and school -- a materially different usable-acreage calculation than a simple total-acreage lease-rate quote might suggest. Ask any developer specifically how they've accounted for these county-specific setbacks in their proposed layout and lease-rate calculation before signing anything.

A real moratorium, driven by a farmland-protection fight

Adopting the ordinance did not end Posey County's fight over commercial solar. Organized local opposition to proposed solar farms, including a project from developer Arevon, led county officials to state publicly that they would not allow the project to proceed if it used prime farmland -- "We do not want the prime farm ground to be taken," as officials were quoted -- and the county went further, imposing a moratorium on new commercial solar and wind projects starting in March 2024. Reporting from local television coverage indicates that moratorium has since been extended, with some reporting placing its current end date at least into December 2026.

For a landowner hoping to lease acreage for a future solar or wind project, this moratorium is the single most important fact to confirm before entertaining any offer: a developer may still approach you, sign an option agreement, or discuss terms during a moratorium, but the county's current posture means an actual project cannot move to approval and construction until the moratorium lifts or is not renewed. Ask any developer directly how they're accounting for the moratorium's current status in their timeline, and confirm the moratorium's actual current end date and any conditions for its expiration directly with the Posey County Area Plan Commission or Board of Commissioners rather than relying on a developer's characterization of it.

What this means for a landowner considering a lease

Posey County's combination of a real, specific ordinance and a real, sustained moratorium sends a clearer signal than either fact alone: the county has already done the work of writing detailed siting rules, but local political sentiment -- particularly around protecting prime farmland -- has been strong enough to pause new projects even after those rules were in place. If you're a landowner approached about a solar or wind lease, treat that combination as evidence that any specific project will likely face real local scrutiny and delay, not just routine permitting, and that the eventual terms your land ends up under (setbacks, buffers, and possibly additional conditions layered on after the moratorium lifts) could differ from what a developer's lease proposal describes today.

It's also worth knowing that Posey County already has real utility-scale energy infrastructure in place: the A.B. Brown Generating Station, a four-unit, 700-megawatt power plant, sits on the Ohio River east of Mount Vernon -- a genuinely different facility from the separate Gibson Generating Station in neighboring Gibson County, worth distinguishing carefully since the two counties' energy landscapes and any related land-use pressure are not the same. If your land sits anywhere near existing transmission infrastructure tied to that plant, mention that directly to any developer, since proximity to existing grid interconnection points is often a meaningful factor in which specific parcels attract a serious lease offer in the first place.

• Confirm the moratorium's current status and any stated end date directly with the Posey County Area Plan Commission before taking a lease offer seriously
• Compare a proposed project layout against the ordinance's 300-foot/100-foot setback, 6-foot buffer, and 500-foot school-distance rules to check the developer's usable-acreage math
• Ask directly whether your land is classified as prime farmland, since county officials have stated publicly they will resist projects sited on it
• Have an attorney review any lease or option agreement independently, since county rules govern siting but do not set lease-rate or contract terms between you and a developer