Solar PV Railroad Setbacks: Ordinances (2022) and Extrapolated Trends

This dataset represents solar energy setback requirements from railroads. A setback requirement is a minimum distance from a railroad that an energy project may be developed. As of April 2022, no ordinances were discovered for any counties. Such ordinances are likely to arise as regulations continue to expand. Therefore, this dataset applies a 30-meter setback, sourced from trends in other infrastructure. A TIF data file and a PNG map of the data are provided, showing areas where solar energy is prohibited or permitted across the contiguous United States.

For further details and citation, please refer to the publication linked below: Lopez, Anthony, Pavlo Pinchuk, Michael Gleason, Wesley Cole, Trieu Mai, Travis Williams, Owen Roberts, Marie Rivers, Mike Bannister, Sophie-Min Thomson, Gabe Zuckerman, and Brian Sergi. 2024. Solar Photovoltaics and Land-Based Wind Technical Potential and Supply Curves for the Contiguous United States: 2023 Edition. Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL/TP-6A20-87843.

Data and Resources

Field Value
DOI 10.25984/2441181
accessLevel public
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issued 2024-01-01T07:00:00Z
landingPage https://data.openei.org/submissions/6131
license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
modified 2024-09-30T20:36:22Z
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programCode {019:000,019:008}
projectNumber 38421
projectTitle Solar and Land-use in Decarbonized Energy Systems
publisher National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
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Groups
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tags
  • AmeriGEO
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • CKAN
  • GEO
  • GEOSS
  • National
  • North America
  • United States
  • county-ordinance
  • data
  • energy
  • infrastructure
  • photovoltaic
  • png
  • power
  • pv
  • railroad
  • regulation
  • regulatory
  • regulatory-constraints
  • setback
  • setbacks
  • siting-lab
  • sitinglab
  • solar
  • solar-energy
  • solar-power
  • solar-pv
  • tif
isopen True
license_id cc-by
license_title Creative Commons Attribution
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maintainer NREL Geospatial Data Science
maintainer_email rev@nrel.gov
metadata_created 2025-09-24T10:20:42.989513
metadata_modified 2025-09-24T10:20:42.989521
notes This dataset represents solar energy setback requirements from railroads. A setback requirement is a minimum distance from a railroad that an energy project may be developed. As of April 2022, no ordinances were discovered for any counties. Such ordinances are likely to arise as regulations continue to expand. Therefore, this dataset applies a 30-meter setback, sourced from trends in other infrastructure. A TIF data file and a PNG map of the data are provided, showing areas where solar energy is prohibited or permitted across the contiguous United States. For further details and citation, please refer to the publication linked below: Lopez, Anthony, Pavlo Pinchuk, Michael Gleason, Wesley Cole, Trieu Mai, Travis Williams, Owen Roberts, Marie Rivers, Mike Bannister, Sophie-Min Thomson, Gabe Zuckerman, and Brian Sergi. 2024. Solar Photovoltaics and Land-Based Wind Technical Potential and Supply Curves for the Contiguous United States: 2023 Edition. Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL/TP-6A20-87843.
num_resources 3
num_tags 29
title Solar PV Railroad Setbacks: Ordinances (2022) and Extrapolated Trends