Large-scale solar projects are an essential tool to mitigate climate change. Despite its value for decarbonization, the rapid deployment of solar projects nationwide has at times produced environmental and social costs, prompting public pushback towards projects and highlighting the need for siting to be done more responsibly. This research aims to identify barriers and opportunities for the responsible deployment of large-scale solar. Utilizing a comparative case study approach, the project team examined solar deployment across a variety of themes, including 1) conditions that made a project feasible to a developer, 2) community reaction to projects, 3) effectiveness of permitting processes, 4) ways to engage communities, 5) environmental mitigation practices, and 6) the value of local champions for successful siting. The team analyzed 11 case studies which inform recommended actions to developers, local governments, state agencies, and interest groups. The cases included several examples of siting on brownfields and disturbed lands–highlighting the opportunities of location on areas where ecosystem services have been impacted by historic uses. Overall, we recommend that stakeholders work to create opportunities for collaboration and creative problem-solving that shift solar siting debates away from a binary framework (whether or not a project should be permitted) towards an integrative one (if a solar project were permitted, how should it deal with the concerns of all parties?). To enable a collaborative approach that incorporates diverse values into solar projects, we recommend practices and policies that allow for proactive planning of future sites and encourage communication between agencies, developers, and stakeholder groups.