Amid climate change concerns, Suffolk encourages solar installations - Long Island Business News

Amid climate change concerns, Suffolk encourages solar installations | Long Island Business News

Courtesy of Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine

In Suffolk County there’s a new campaign to encourage solar installations by residents and businesses as concerns increase over climate change.

The county’s “Solar-Up Suffolk” programs focuses on education and information on installing solar power. The programs begin in April, which has become recognized as “Earth Month.”

Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine announced the new programs on Friday.

“The threat of climate change is not in the future,” he said in a written statement. “We are experiencing it right now with more intense storms, worse and worse flooding events, and extreme heat in the summer.

“There is no silver bullet, but I believe that solar energy is one key piece of the puzzle. ‘Solar-Up Suffolk’ is a way for the county to encourage more residents and businesses to explore the benefits of solar power,” he added.

The effort comes at a time when scientists say that, for the ninth straight month, Earth has obliterated global heat records. The European Union’s climate agency Copernicus says February, the winter as a whole and the world’s oceans set new high-temperature marks. Sea surface temperatures weren’t just the hottest for February, but are eclipsing any month on record, soaring past August 2023’s mark and still rising at the end of the month. Scientists say it is clearly long-term human-caused warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas, along with a boost from a natural El Nino’s warming of the central Pacific that alters weather worldwide.

As a way to increase awareness toward renewable energy sources, Suffolk County will hold a solar fair on Earth Day, April 22. The event will feature numerous solar vendors, local research institutions that include the Advanced Energy Center at Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory, environmental groups, and county departments. This event will take place in the H. Lee Dennison Building in Hauppauge.

For county employees, Suffolk is also planning a lunch and learn “Solar 101.” The event will include solar experts from the industry as well as a county employee who has already installed solar energy at home.

Suffolk’s Industrial Development Agency (IDA) is also expected to adopt a policy at its April 25 meeting that strongly encourages any business seeking IDA benefits to evaluate its building for the use of solar power. Many companies come to the IDA when they are building new or expanding existing facilities. This new policy will offer a timely opportunity for those companies to learn about how solar energy can offer long-term savings on their energy bills that will help their bottom line.

“Long Islanders were so good at adopting solar that we exhausted the New York State solar incentives years ago,” Romaine said. “With changing economic conditions, it is critical that the state find ways to support the adoption of solar to meet the aggressive climate goals that have been set.”

Under New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the state aims to achieve its mandated goal of a zero-emission electricity sector by 2040, including 70% renewable energy generation by 2030, and to reach economy wide carbon neutrality.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.