Local governments often struggle with developing or updating their policies for distributed renewable energy generation projects, especially for residential wind turbines and solar arrays. The prevalence of model ordinances has led to wider awareness and adoption of regulations that assist planning officials with answering inquiries from potential system owners and installers. Some jurisdictions have developed ordinances that effectively pave the way for local renewable energy installations. Others, however, have adopted policies that only appear receptive but actually severely limit and possibly prevent small residential systems from being installed. As a step toward a more comprehensive comparison of ordinances, this paper examines two community approaches to zoning and permitting to highlight how model ordinances were modified for the local social and political contexts. At issue is whether or not the adopted ordinances ultimately permit residential renewable energy systems to fully capture available resources and to what extent the communities share benefits of locally generated renewable energy.
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