A Partial Observer
Town of Columbia Residents Wary of Project
The Town of Columbia is being pitched a 350 megawatt solar and 20 MW battery storage project by French owned, and San Diego based EDF Renewables. The project outreach to local landowners began quietly in 2019 and will require approximately 2,200 usable, contiguous acres—equal to 10 percent of the land in the Town of Columbia, which is known to have some of the most fertile farmland in the state.
The flood of large solar projects around New York State popping up over the last few years is fueled by the state’s aggressive goal of using 70 percent renewable energy by 2030. In 2019, the state passed and signed into law the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which led to the creation of the Office of Renewable Energy Siting and, through executive law, the 94-c process, in efforts to speed up and ease the permitting process that project developers had long sought.
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