The author is a member of State College Borough Council, which voted 6-1 on Monday, Dec. 16, in favor of joining the Solar Power Purchase Agreement among 10 governmental entities in Centre County.
My vote against the Solar Power Purchase Agreement centers around three things: principle, control and environmental impacts.
On principle, any consultants that our municipal government hires should be held to the highest standards, as they have been deemed to have qualities worthy of taxpayer money. In 2023, there was a hard budget limit set for the legal team tasked with drafting the contracts for the SPPA. It was exceeded by nearly 51% ($83,342) after adjustment. Not only did this raise significant process concerns, but it also was never accompanied by a thorough explanation of why this happened. We set budgets for a reason (and the $165K budget here was set after much debate), but when they are exceeded, we deserve to know why. We should never retroactively approve money that was committed or spent above what we had already budgeted for, when there is no specific, tangible reason for doing so.
As I have maintained before, I have seen data showing that the Borough could generate a significant majority (nearly 1.7 MW or 63%) of its annual energy consumption if it builds solar panels on municipal property. Much like Centre County Government and others have done, we should own and control our own solar power. State College Borough and other entities are signing away a sizable amount of control over our electricity consumption by signing this SPPA. The energy market is a risky one with extremely fluctuating prices, and this 15-year locked deal limits our ability to take advantage of other options if they become cheaper.
The land development plan for the solar panel array has yet to officially be approved by various planning agencies, but my opposition to the SPPA also stems from the size of the proposed development. More than 100 acres of Centre County farmland will be taken for this project. As the Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority has shown through their roof solar array, we can profit from the wonderful benefits of solar power without taking any land. Recently, a constituent asked me to consider, before taking any official government action, if I am being a good ancestor of our Earth. I believe that I am doing so by voting against this deal and strongly encouraging us to explore rooftop solar or other renewable energy that does not occupy so much land. We only have so much acreage of farmland left. Let’s leave the farmland be.
While I know that my vote will be not supported by all, please know that I did my due diligence and took it very seriously to relay the many concerns about this deal publicly, in the interest of transparency. I do hope that this SPPA project ultimately succeeds if it is to move forward, but nothing outweighs the ethical missteps surrounding the process that led us here. I voted with these priority fiduciary considerations in mind.
