Frasier Solar’s PILOT:
A decades-long investment in Knox County
In August of 2023, Knox County commissioners approved a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) for the Frasier Solar project. The PILOT, which has since been certified by the State, will pay county taxing authorities $1,080,000 every year for up to 40 years, which is 47 times what the land currently generates in taxes.
This translates to $42.8 million of stable, guaranteed revenue over 40 years, nearly half of which would go to Mount Vernon City School District.
What is a “PILOT?”
The PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) program allows local communities to create a lasting partnership with a utility-scale solar facility that will provide significant and sustaining revenues for schools and local governments, while creating jobs and economic activity.
Find out more about Frasier’s PILOT on our Frasier PILOT Fact Sheet.
Buckeye Institute’s Flawed Analysis of Frasier PILOT
In November of 2023, The Buckeye Institute published a flawed analysis that omitted roughly $8.5 million in state need-based education funding that Knox County would lose over the life of the Frasier Project if not for passage of the PILOT, and thus incorrectly concluded that Frasier Solar’s PILOT will generate less economic benefit for the County as compared to traditional taxation. The authors of the analysis have since privately admitted this key error, but publicly doubled down on their flawed analysis in a subsequent December 2023 post. Analysis of Frasier’s PILOT published by Ohio State University in January 2024 confirmed that Buckeye’s analysis and resulting conclusion was incorrect.
Buckeye’s analysis was conducted as part of a coordinated misinformation campaign funded by dark-money groups which seeks to promote traditional corporate energy interests at the expense of private property rights, market competition, and economic development in Knox County.
Click here for our original detailed response to the Buckeye Institute’s misleading analysis of the Frasier PILOT, as well as our response to Buckeye’s subsequent flawed analysis.