Recognizing senses of place in just energy transitions: Insights from rural Pennsylvania solar development

• Senses of place compose a spectrum of flexibility to grid-scale solar development. • Misrecognition, related to private property rights, impedes place-based transitions. • Just transitions contend with relationship between recognition and sense of place. Renewable energy development that is compatible with local senses of place where it is built is thought to be an optimal way to pursue place-based energy transition. However, this is contingent upon the recognition of different senses of place that are formed by diverse sets of place meanings and attachments that vary across differently positioned members of local communities. In this paper, we parse why there are discrepancies within local community acceptance of and opposition toward grid-scale solar development in two rural Pennsylvania townships by analyzing the ability of different senses of place to flex with the changes that this development brings. We draw upon a series of 26 interviews and a focus group we convened with residents of and informants familiar with the case study area and recent grid-scale solar projects to study this relationship, and we argue that senses of place exist along a spectrum of flexibility from accepting of a dynamic working landscape to protective of an amenities landscape. Multiple forms of misrecognition, influenced particularly by the legal and cultural embeddedness of private property rights, impede the achievement of a just, place-based transition that is informed by people across this spectrum. We present our findings with four vignettes that illuminate some of these complexities. Based on our findings, we argue that a place-based approach should center recognitional justice to not only identify and respond to place meanings and attachments but also parse how they are constructed and emerge from within existing systems of power.