New York Supreme Court Cites Center in in Ruling Against Clear-Cutting for Solar Project

The Pace Energy and Climate Center was cited by the New York Supreme Court of Westchester County in upholding the Town of Mount Pleasant Planning Board in denying approval of a solar project that would have clear-cut 26 acres of trees to build a solar PV array of the same size. Quoting Pace as a basis for the Planning Board’s decision, the court stated in CES Hawthorne Solar, LLC v. The Town of Mount Pleasant Planning Board (2022), “it is essential that local communities deploy clean energy in a manner that safeguards natural resources such as forests. While recognizing the importance of advancing solar in New York State, the Pace Energy and Climate Center does not recommend clearcutting healthy tree stands to clear land to install solar PV arrays. Trees are important for sequestering carbon, and also for protecting biodiversity, preventing heat island effects, and providing a healthy environment in urban and suburban areas. Biodiversity is especially difficult to quantify and track, cannot be directly valued against other metrics like carbon reductions, and, as a result, is chronically undervalued, contributing to ecosystem losses. Given that biodiversity is severely at risk and that many decades are required to fully replace all the environmental services provided by mature tree stands, tree removal should only be done sparingly.”