RI Solar Development Needs to Change Its Focus to Rooftops and Already-Marred Areas
By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff
"Solarize Charlestown," a now discontinued program, gave residents discounted rates to install rooftop solar. Not only do the panels cut monthly electricity costs, even in winter, but every month, National Grid sends us a check for the excess energy we sell to the grid - Will Collette (my photo)
Dana Goodman sells and her company
installs residential rooftop solar systems in both Rhode Island and
Massachusetts. In the Bay State, she said it’s an easier and simpler process.
She doesn’t know why Rhode Island chose to make a straightforward climate
solution “mind-numbingly” complicated. She doesn’t understand why so many Ocean
State trees have been axed to install solar panels.
“Rhode Island policy makes no
sense,” said Goodman, who has been in solar sales for nearly seven years,
including the past two and a half at Bristol-based Newport Electric
Construction & Services. “Solar is easy. There’s a lot of mystery around
solar, and I don’t think there needs to be.”
Quarry and sand pit owners are under no legal obligation to reclaim the land. The moonscapes they leave behind when they close are ideal solar panel sites.
The Providence resident said there
is plenty of untapped residential, commercial and industrial roofs that could
accommodate solar panels. She noted there is a “gazillion acres” of
already-disturbed space that could host solar arrays. She said trees don’t need
to be killed to generate more renewable energy in Rhode Island.
The state’s green-space energy rush
began in earnest in March 2017, when then-Gov. Gina Raimondo signed an
unenforceable executive order that encouraged the state to
attain 1,000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2020. According to the Office of Energy Resources,
the state currently has 1,003 megawatts of renewable energy, including 35
megawatts of landfill gas, which is composed of roughly 50 percent methane.
The governor’s well-meaning but
shortsighted call to action, which neglected to highlight the best places for
such development or call for the need to incentivize the use of
already-developed areas, unleashed this fast-growing industry on municipal
governments ill-prepared for the solar stampede.
Before leaving for Washington, D.C.,
and President Biden’s administration, Raimondo signed another executive order that advances a 100 percent
renewable-energy future for Rhode Island by 2030. This executive order, like
the previous one, glosses over the issue of responsible siting.
Goodman said one way to help electrify Rhode Island’s heating and transportation sectors and reach the state’s net-zero targets would be to allow residential energy customers to contribute more to the grid’s overall sourcing of energy.
To start, she believes the two
initiatives that guide residential solar in Rhode Island — the Renewable Energy Growth Program
and net metering — need to
be revamped to better address the needs and wants of residential solar
customers. In the Bay State, the Solar Massachusetts Renewable
Target (SMART) program guides solar development.
Goodman suggested, for example, net
metering of up to 100 percent of customers’ historic usage, and then a cash
incentive for excess production beyond the 100 percent at a
fairly priced supplier rate.
“We could provide ourselves with so much locally if we just increased the installation capacity limits for individuals,” she said.
“The reality of becoming 100 percent renewable by 2030
is more feasible if we let residential customers produce the amount of energy
they want — 10 to 20 percent extra annually. There needs to be a public
discussion about why there are limitations that tap down the amount of energy
residential customers can produce. More residential solar could do a lot for local
power. Localized power production is the key.”
Cutting down trees, like in the Coventry village of Greene, to make room for renewable energy doesn’t make climate, environmental or public health sense. (John Shields)
Warwick resident Jane Austin, a former senior policy analyst with Save The Bay
who retired seven years ago, has made her concerns known about a solar ordinance she
believes the city has tried to fast-track that puts trees and green space in
the crosshairs.
Warwick officials are trying to create, in what she called an untested approach, a citywide overlay district for solar. She said the proposed ordinance would open all of the city’s residentially zoned land and significant chunks of open space to potential utility-scale solar development.
She noted two significant properties are being
considered for possible future solar development: the Little Rhody Beagle Club
and portions of the Kent County YMCA.
Austin, whose career advocating for the environment was honored with a Lifetime Achievement award in 2014 from the Environmental Protection Agency, believes Warwick has plenty of solar development potential, with acres of rooftops and parking lots.
She said city
officials need to take a strategic approach, optimizing renewable energy siting
and avoiding the problems experienced in other municipalities, such as Hopkinton, West Greenwich and Coventry.
She has urged the City Council to
adopt an ordinance that directs solar development to its developed, commercial
and industrial areas. She said as written the ordinance would give solar
developers the de facto ability to develop solar “by right” citywide once
properties become “overlay eligible.” She envisions a flood of case-by-case
solar projects inundating the city, with many proposed for green space.
In a June 10 memorandum to
the City Council, Austin wrote that the city needs to articulate and manage the
key tradeoff in solar development from a climate and community character
perspective.
“Where do we want solar development
in Warwick?” she asked. "Unless the answer is everywhere, we should not
pass an ordinance which makes that possible.”
In a lengthy June 19 response from
the city’s principal planner, Lucas Murray wrote, “We believe that the proposed
ordinance presents a balanced approach that allows residents to easily install
personal use solar to offset their current billing; encourages the development
of solar in commercial/industrial zones; affords expedited approval for
contaminated sites, carports, and other similar canopy structures; and
discourages to [sic] installation of principal use solar in non-commercial
zones. While the ordinance proposal may not fully satisfy your specific goals,
we disagree that it is deeply flawed.”
Austin isn’t buying the planner’s
response. In a July 8 letter to the editor
published in the Warwick Beacon, Austin wrote, “solar development is being
driven by federal and state incentives designed to fight climate change. It is
lunacy to add special, permissive treatment for solar development throughout
the city ‘because of climate change’ if the likely result is the accelerated
destruction of Warwick’s remaining forests and tree canopy.
“Warwick’s trees and forests filter
pollution from our air and waterways. They lower urban temperatures, decreasing
energy use. They capture carbon to slow the rate of climate change. They
provide critical habitat for wildlife.”
She told ecoRI News the proposed
solar overlay district has the potential to turn Warwick into a checkerboard of
solar development.
The City Council Ordinance Committee
recently held the proposed solar ordinance, citing concerns about the scope of
its impact and questioning the adequacy of public notice.
A similar scenario is playing out in
Portsmouth, where an energy developer headquartered out of state wants to build
a 1.3-megawatt solar facility
on a piece of private property covered in trees and close to the Lawton Valley
Reservoir on West Main Road.
If developed as a utility-scale energy
station, residents are concerned about the loss of wildlife habitat, increased
stormwater runoff and the potential impact on a public drinking water source
that serves Portsmouth, Middletown and Newport.
Union Street resident Richard Munch
said it is quite shocking that a project of this kind has been proposed for
this site.
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| This site cleared by Green Development was once Rhode Island open space. (Kevin LaRose/YouTube) |
Unnecessary loss
Backhoes, front-end loaders, dump trucks, gravel crushers, other diesel-powered
heavy equipment and explosives have leveled hundreds of acres of forestland in
the name of renewable energy. The clear-cutting effort has been called a
sacrifice needed to deal with the climate crisis.
“There’s so many ways to do solar
right than ripping down forestland,” Goodman said. “It’s not the way to go.
It’s so unnecessary.”
Thousands of trees have been felled
in Rhode Island during the past four-plus years for one simple reason: money.
A former CEO for Cranston-based
Green Development told ecoRI News in 2018 that
installing solar arrays on brownfields and landfills is the “most expensive
option known to man. It’s a great idea, but it’s a cost issue. You can’t
penetrate the surface and landfills keep settling. The many issues with those
kinds of sites drive costs way up.”
It’s more profitable to cut down
trees, and that is all that matters. To this day, Rhode Island has failed to
adequately incentivize the installation of solar arrays on brownfields, former
landfills, gravel pits and rooftops. Despite a sea of asphalt parking lots
helping to warm Rhode Island and exacerbate flooding, solar carports remain a
rare sight.
State officials let cash-strapped
municipalities and their volunteer boards become overrun with proposals for
ground-mounted solar installations on open space. When some of Rhode Island’s
rural communities tried to direct such projects away from residential
neighborhoods and off green space, they were sued. The state shrugged.
During the construction of their
utility-scale solar projects on green space, a handful of developers have been
cited by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management for such
violations as the unauthorized alteration of freshwater wetlands.
Few people, beyond those with ties
to fossil fuels and those who lobby for them, oppose Rhode Island’s need for
more solar energy, but where many of these projects are being built or proposed
remains a climate misadventure, as the environment is far too often deemed a
hindrance to financial gain.
In the same story where the former
Green Development CEO was quoted, Mark DePasquale, the
company’s chairman and founder, blamed environmentalists for exaggerating
forestland concerns. He claimed if renewable energy projects weren’t being
built the trees would be cut to make room for homes.
“Our forests aren’t as healthy as environmentalists
think,” he said. “Clearing a 60-year-old forest doesn’t have as much of an
impact as some people think.”
ecoRI News routinely receives phone
calls and emails from concerned residents upset about another large-scale solar
project that has been proposed for a wooded lot or meadow — the Warwick solar
overlay district and the array proposed for Portsmouth green space being the
two most-recent examples.
Conversely, we are notified much
less frequently by state officials about a median strip being covered in solar
arrays or a solar carport being erected. A June 3 press release from the Office of Energy
Resources did announce the state renewed an initiative to encourage solar
projects on brownfields, noting an additional $1 million in state Regional
Greenhouse Gas Initiative proceeds will be committed to this program in
addition to the $2 million allocated between 2019 and 2020.
Some of the resident angst can be
contributed to not-in-my-backyard selfishness, as not every ground-mounted
solar array is the work of a greedy developer or pushed through by municipal
officials concerned only about tax revenue.
Some projects have been installed in
places that make sense — i.e., the recent construction of a solar installation
on Navy property, devoid of trees, along traffic-heavy West Main Road in
Portsmouth. They can also help farms stay
financially viable.
But the relentless whacking of
woodlands to make room for silicon wafers is taking a bite out of a natural
climate-change mitigator. And people are upset, whether it is in their backyard
or not.
Editor’s note: Dana Goodman once
worked for ecoRI News as an outreach associate and the company she works for
has advertised with us.