In 2012, inspired by his growing interest in environmental stewardship, New York City real estate developer and serial entrepreneur Gerald Rosengarten had just finished designing and building a green home for himself and his wife in Southampton, Long Island. It was built utilizing many of the most innovative and effective energy-saving technologies of that time and Jerry was fascinated with both the exploration process and the result. Not long afterward, while on vacation in Southern Italy, he stopped to admire for the first time up-close, a vast solar array almost sculptural in design. Jerry’s curiosity was ignited when he learned about how very well this solar farm benefited the local farming community as a clean energy source.
Jerry returned home to New York with a new creative spark of an idea that was highly unusual at that time: He would build his own solar farm. He and some partners owned an undeveloped piece of land in Mastic, LI, and after he convinced them it was a good idea, he began the process of developing one of the first privately built solar farms in the Northeast. This marked the point in Jerry’s life when he became what he calls a “climate entrepreneur. After years of a series of dedicated, deliberate applications, studies, hearings, and approvals (and challenges), the Middle Island Solar Farm (MISF) was built in 2020. Today, it achieves its intended purpose of providing 19.6 MW of clean, environmentally friendly energy that flows directly into the LIPA power grid. More importantly, to Jerry Rosengarten, the MISF story is a testament to the value of private investment in creating opportunities to build proven solutions to the effects of climate change created by harmful fossil fuel emissions. And… it’s just simply good business that supports the future of the planet.
A complete telling of how the MISF came to be can be found in Gerald Rosengarten’s book “Jump on the Train.”
