“With the passage of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in July 2019, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law the most ambitious climate plan in the country, requiring that, by 2030, seventy percent of New York’s electricity to come from renewable energy sources, and, by 2040, the state’s electricity sector is to be “100-percent carbon-free.”
To get to that goal, in February, the governor proposed a backdoor state-run solution that would streamline the environmental review and permitting of renewable-energy projects of 25 megawatts and greater — in part, by excluding local municipalities from much of the decision-making process — while also allowing medium-sized projects, between 10 and 25 megawatts, to opt into the process.
Current state permitting applies only to renewable-energy projects of 25 megawatts and greater.
There are currently about 15 local renewable-energy projects in the National Grid interconnection queue (projects looking to tie into the utility’s electricity grid) that are in various stages of proposal — some have already been approved by local planning boards while others have yet to be presented to the municipality in which they are proposed to be built. “
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Mulkerrin, Sean. Altamont Enterprise 5 March 2020.