PLAINFIELD — Three students from one of the world’s most prestigious academic institutions were welcomed to one of the state’s smallest communities on Saturday as the people of Plainfield, and the region more generally, continue to wrestle with large-scale solar developments in a small remote town.
As part of their thesis project, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate students Jacob Hall, Edmond Lloyd and Jiao Zhao are working to help Plainfield refine citing standards for large-scale solar developments. They hail from the MIT Renewable Energy Citing Clinic, a public service program providing neutral assistance for communities to navigate renewable energy concerns.
Introducing himself to a few dozen gathered for two hours in the town’s public safety complex, Hall shared his experience of growing up in rural Illinois where renewable energy developments were pushed through without local input or feedback.
“I’ve seen how solar issues can really tear up our communities, and they [the communities] didn’t really get anything out of solar coming into my hometown,” he said. “But how can we turn this into a net positive? It may not seem it, but we really want to try and emphasize how we could flip that narrative around.”
Even on the other side of the globe, Zhao had a similar experience growing up in rural China, where large wind farms reshaped the landscape around her hometown. That experience, she said, drew her to study the balance between renewable energy goals and local input.
Lloyd, a native of west Africa, has 13 years of experience as an urban planner and architect in land-use planning, zoning reform, climate resilience and infrastructure development.
The three students mostly listened as community members reiterated a litany of worries, highlighting deforestation and the potential dangers of lithium ion batteries which could leak and cause pollution and water contamination.
Residents also stressed the town’s lack of resources. Not only does the town rely on a volunteer fire department during emergencies, but its volunteer government doesn’t have the time or the resources to adequately cite large-scale solar systems, town officials emphasized.
This process alongside the MIT students will produce a Community Benefit Plan and Agreement. When completed, the plan will lay out how to bring together both abutters, community members and developers to the table to discuss positives and negatives.
The plan will later be added to the town’s zoning bylaws, and the agreement will be legally binding for developers.
The Gazette’s reporting of Plainfield’s struggles with large-scale array developments — three such proposals have been filed in the last six months — caught the attention of an MIT professor who volunteered the students to help. The work is being done for free.
Going forward the students will be available for Zoom meetings or phone calls with community members as more data and anecdotes are collected to inform a final product. Hall can be contacted at jhall40@mit.edu for times to meet, and comments made in these virtual conversations will remain anonymous.
While the town continues to try and refine zoning bylaws to balance renewable energy and Plainfield’s rural character, some residents also called on their fellow residents to not entertain solar developers who cold-call and ask if they are willing to lease their land for those purposes.
During a passionate address to the room, Bruce Davidson said to say no to the money developers are “dangling” in front of them.
“Like sex or drugs, just say no,” he said. “My point is that we need education for everybody, so that when these companies approach any particular person, they fully understand what they’re getting into and more importantly what they’re getting their neighbors into before they take the money these companies are dangling.”