The Long Island Solar Roadmap has continued to make progress over the past few months, using remote meetings to keep in touch with Steering Committee and Consortium members during this time.
A subgroup of the Consortium, the Strategies Task Force met in person on February 4. Each participant was assigned to a group of 3-4 to develop strategies and actions to meet the following challenges:
Challenge #1: encourage development of solar on private low-impact sites, e.g. economic interventions that would make it more cost-effective for developers and landowners, or programs/policies that make it more feasible or address non-economic barriers.
Challenge #2: increase solar development on public-owned sites low-impact sites and/or community solar and expanded access, e.g. education of local governments, or municipal programs to support financing for low- and middle-income households’ participation.
Challenge #3: increase community engagement, e.g. mobilize voices of support, or anticipate and address the concerns of the vocal minority.
A list of the strategies the group came up with to meet those three challenges is HERE.
After that initial meeting, we broadened our strategy development sessions to other groups of stakeholders, hosting a series of six online sessions during the period of March 30-April 10. Each session was aimed at further developing strategies that a specific group of actors might take to advance low-impact solar development on Long Island– the solar industry, businesses and commercial space owners, town and county governments, agriculture, utilities and state agencies, and other entities.
A crosswalk of how each of those entities might contribute to advancing various strategies is available HERE.