Wind & Solar Leasing in Klickitat County, Washington

What already exists: Big Horn, Windy Point, and the Energy Overlay Zone

Klickitat County has been home to commercial wind energy for roughly two decades. The Big Horn Wind Farm generates roughly 200 MW using 133 GE Energy 1.5 MW turbines, and the Windy Point wind facility adds roughly 400 MW of additional capacity in the county. To manage this development, Klickitat County created its own Energy Overlay Zone (EOZ) -- a dedicated zoning tool identifying areas of the county suited to wind development, distinct from the standard zoning that applies elsewhere. A solar facility, Lund Hill, has also been developed in the county as part of Puget Sound Energy's broader renewable-energy contracting with Avangrid. None of this established wind infrastructure is affected by the newer solar/BESS restrictions described below -- it's a separate, longer-standing regulatory track.

The 2024-2025 turn against new solar and battery storage

The county's posture toward newer utility-scale solar and battery energy storage system (BESS) development changed sharply starting September 3, 2024, when the Board of County Commissioners approved Resolution 09124: a six-month moratorium and interim zoning controls on new BESS siting, installation, and development. That moratorium set off a longer ordinance-drafting process through 2025, run jointly by the county's Planning Commission and a Project Advisory Committee, that produced a new Industrial-Scale BESS & Solar Ordinance -- with drafts dated as recently as December 2025 located during this research pass.

Legal commentary tracking the proposal (Renewable + Law, September 2025) described its scope and severity as functionally amounting to a near-ban on local permitting for utility-scale solar and BESS development: extensive setbacks that significantly narrow viable siting options, a mandatory agrivoltaics-integration requirement regardless of a specific site's actual feasibility for combined solar-and-farming use, and complex, costly application requirements. The practical read from that commentary is that developers facing this ordinance would have little choice but to pursue state-level permitting through Washington's Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) instead of county approval -- a substantially more time-consuming and expensive process, but one that isn't subject to the county's local restrictions.

A separate, standing ban in two named valleys

Beyond the ordinance's general setback and agrivoltaics standards, county documentation located during this research pass indicates the ordinance maintains an outright, standing prohibition on industrial-scale solar development specifically within the Goldendale and Centerville valleys -- a provision that supersedes any other part of the ordinance. If you're evaluating a parcel in either valley specifically for its solar-lease potential, this named prohibition, not the ordinance's general terms, is the controlling fact.

1. Confirm the current, final adopted status of the Industrial-Scale BESS & Solar Ordinance directly with Klickitat County's Planning Department -- as of this research pass, the Planning Commission was still in deliberations following a scheduled hearing continuation in mid-December 2025.
2. If your parcel is within the Goldendale or Centerville valley, confirm directly whether the standing solar prohibition there applies to your specific site and use, independent of the ordinance's other setback provisions.
3. If a large-scale solar or BESS project is proposed near your land, ask whether the developer is pursuing county permitting or the state EFSEC process -- EFSEC's siting authority can proceed even where county rules would otherwise restrict the project.
4. For land near existing wind infrastructure (Big Horn, Windy Point) or within the county's Energy Overlay Zone, the newer solar/BESS restrictions described here generally don't apply -- confirm which regulatory track actually governs your parcel's energy-lease potential.