Big win for solar in Waltham NIMBY battle
Apparently, a whole bunch of cities towns and suburbs across Massachusetts never got the climate change memo.
The state’s Supreme Judicial Court has ruled against a bid by Waltham to bar a developer from building an access road through land the firm owns in Waltham into a planned, 413,600-square-foot solar farm in Lexington.
“The Court’s decision is a victory for the growing and crucial solar energy industry in the Commonwealth,” said Ben Robbins, the New England Legal Foundation’s senior staff attorney, who wrote an amicus brief in support of the solar farm developer.
Waltham is not alone in its opposition to new solar, and for that matter, wind projects, with a number of battles between local communities and renewable energy developers across the state, and the country as well, as this Columbia University paper details.
Given the huge amount of new renewable energy projects that will be needed in the years ahead to decarbonize the power sector in Massachusetts and beyond, the local opposition doesn’t bode well.