The invoice Ohio landowners don’t see coming

CAUV recoupment: the bill that follows the panels

Most Ohio farm ground is taxed under CAUV, the Current Agricultural Use Value program, which values qualifying farmland on what it earns as farmland instead of what it would fetch on the open market. That break can be worth a great deal per acre every year. The catch is written into the same law that grants it: when you convert land out of agricultural use, the state recoups part of the break you already took. Under Ohio Revised Code 5713.34, the recoupment charge equals the CAUV tax savings from the three tax years right before the conversion.

Putting a utility-scale solar array on the ground is a conversion. The acres under panels stop qualifying for CAUV, and the recoupment charge comes due. By default, it is invoiced to the landowner, not the developer. A well-drafted solar lease reassigns that charge to the developer, but it only happens if the lease says so in plain terms. If the clause is missing, vague, or capped below the real number, the difference is yours to pay.

One honest contrast worth knowing: wind does not carry the same exposure. A solar project pulls its entire footprint out of CAUV. A wind project converts only the turbine pads and access roads, roughly 1.25 acres per turbine, so the rest of a hosting farm keeps growing crops and keeps its CAUV status. The recoupment bill on a wind farm is a fraction of the solar equivalent. That does not make a wind lease automatically better, but it is a real difference in how much tax exposure the conversion creates.

The county line isn’t the question; your township is

Even a lease with a perfect tax clause is worth nothing if the project can never be permitted. In Ohio, that decision is not made in Columbus, and it is not really made at the county line. Senate Bill 52, in effect since October 2021, lets a county designate restricted areas and veto a utility-scale solar (50 megawatts or larger) or wind (5 megawatts or larger) project at the pre-application stage, and it seats two local voting members on the state siting board for each case. Crucially, counties draw those restricted areas township by township. Your neighbor one township over can be wide open while your township is closed.

The map keeps tightening. As of May 2026, 38 Ohio counties had a solar exclusion zone in at least one township (Ohio Citizen Action tracker), up from 37 as of September 2025 (Ohio Environmental Council). The state siting board has denied 8 solar applications, about 1.1 gigawatts, since 2021, largely on local-opposition grounds. Approvals still happen where the township is willing (the state siting board approved the Frasier Solar project in Knox County in June 2025), but the trend line is toward more restriction, not less.

A concrete recent example: in Richland County, voters faced a May 2026 referendum that would have reversed the county’s renewable restrictions. It failed, roughly 53 percent to 47, so the SB 52 restricted-area designation stands in 11 of the county’s 18 townships. If your ground is in one of those 11, a solar or wind lease on it is not going anywhere no matter what the per-acre number says. That is why the first question about any Ohio energy lease is not the price. It is whether your township is inside a restricted area. You can start with the tracker’s county list, but confirm your specific township before you value an offer, because the tracker is a moving picture and shows the counties named as of the date it was accessed, not a permanent roster.

Why your county’s posture can hinge on the PILOT money

There is a reason a county board leans for or against these projects, and a lot of it is money. Ohio lets a county approve a PILOT, a payment in lieu of taxes, as an alternative to standard property tax on the project. Under Ohio Revised Code 5727.75, solar is set at $7,000 per megawatt per year and wind at $6,000 to $8,000 per megawatt per year by Ohio-workforce tier, with county add-ons allowed up to a $9,000 per megawatt cap. For a large array that is real, recurring revenue for the county, which is part of why some boards court these projects and others, weighing the local opposition, decline them. Knowing whether your county has embraced or resisted that money tells you a lot about whether a lease on your land will ever be built.

How AgriTerra handles Ohio in a report

When an AgriTerra report shows a solar or wind estimate for an Ohio parcel, it does not stop at the resource. It runs the parcel through a county-level policy gate and attaches the Ohio-specific disclosures above, the CAUV recoupment charge and the PILOT structure, so the number reflects whether a project could actually be permitted and what tax follows the conversion, not just what the sun or wind is worth in the abstract. You can read how that gate works on our methodology page: how we check whether a lease can actually be built. Because the federal tax-credit rules changed in 2025 and matter here too, pair this with our explainer on what the 2025 federal energy law means for your farmland. And for the sourced read on your own parcel, that is what the Decision Report is for.

The standing recommendation does not change: have a qualified attorney or advisor review any lease, option, or letter of intent before you sign, and make sure the CAUV recoupment charge is assigned in writing. Ohio State University Extension’s Farm Office energy-law library and its Farmland Owner’s Guide to Solar Leasing are a good, free place to start reading, and the OSU Ohioline fact sheet on CAUV and renewables walks through the recoupment math.

Related reading: why we will tell you a lease won't happen on your land, plus the 10x property-tax jump under solar in Indiana and why the Iowa wind boom moved to repowering.