North American Clean Energy
April 11th, 2024
My Dream of Building a Solar Farm and the Systemic Barriers that Nearly Killed It
Throughout my life and career as a real estate developer in New York City, I’ve had many successes. In what is clearly one of my most unusual development projects in a long career filled with them, I initiated the building of a solar farm to help the environment.
The Middle Island Solar Farm (MISF), located on Long Island, NY’s eastern tip, has been fully operational since 2018. It produces 19.6 MW of electricity. That’s roughly equivalent to powering 4,000 Long Island homes per year. The clean solar energy it produces is also equivalent to removing 6,000-8,000 cars with noxious emissions from the roadways. That’s good news, and it pleases me that my vision and goal of using private investment for the public good has been actualized. The not-so-good news is that there are systemic barriers to private investment in clean energy projects like MISF. I’m sure I found every single barrier along the way. Are you familiar with the sad-but-true old saw that it is the pioneers who always catch the arrows? Well, I seem to have caught more than my share: It took five years to even receive a permit to build the solar farm and jump through all the regulatory, zoning, and local opposition hoops. Flaming hoops. It only took just eight months to actually build it. Those are completely unbalanced factors.
