COOPERSTOWN CONSIDERING

COMMUNITY SOLAR PROGRAM

COOPERSTOWN

The Village of Cooperstown and Town of Otsego have begun discussing a “community solar program,” Village Trustee Lou Allstadt, the clean-energy advocate, told a program sponsored by Sustainable Otsego in the county Courthouse this evening.

The idea of the program, described earlier by Jessica Azulay, with the Alliance for a Green Economy, would be to create a community solar farm that would share the energy and cost savings community wide.

If the town and village were to go forward, this would be perhaps only the third community in the state to have such a program.

When he spoke, Allstadt said conversations with the town and village have occurred within the past week, and he characterized them as having potential but preliminary.

The evening’s program included Jannette Barth, an economist, describing the Wind, Water & Solar Program first proposed last year that, calling on thousands of windmills and other elements, aims to wean the state off fossil fuels completely by 2050.

In her remarks, Azulay pointed out the flaws in the state Energy Plan that aims to achieve 80 percent sustainable energy by 2050, but has no detailed strategy to reach that goal. Public comment on the plan ended Friday.