When the solar complex is no longer useful, who is going to pay for its cleanup?

The landowners and the local taxpayers. Allow me to explain.

Solar developers are usually required to submit a decommissioning plan alongside their complex construction plan (although, for small projects, this may not be the case). This decommissioning plan is a document explaining how the panels, steel posts, concrete, wiring, batteries (if present), roads, and infrastructure would eventually be removed at the end of the project’s life.

For ORES projects, there are decommissioning financial assurance proposals included with the permit applications. For the 100MW Fort Edward Solar, according to ORES, it "will provide a financial security in the form of a Letter of Credit (LoC) or other financial assurance approved by ORES to the Town for the full amount of the Net Decommissioning and Site Restoration Cost Estimate.”

The "financial assurance" would remain active until the site is decommissioned.

Here's where things get disgustingly nefarious.

For Fort Edward Solar, the amount held for decommissioning follows a formula: decommissioning cost + contingency − salvage value.

The salvage value is the resale of steel, copper, equipment, or "recyclable materials" (breaking down panels costs more than recycling them outright).

Developers use the salvage value to go from setting aside $5 million for decommissioning down to $1 to $2 million. That is not enough to decommission an 1,800-acre solar complex. The companies then file bankruptcy or are nowhere to be found if there is mass panel damage from a hailstorm.

When these agreements are drafted, they can't possibly predict future weak scrap markets, inflation, or future disposal regulations.

The money set aside for decommissioning is not enough. The company has sold the LLC multiple times by then or filed bankruptcy. Who is stuck with the remaining decommissioning bill?

The landowners that sold out in the first place. It's baked right into their contracts (you won't hear this from them - they signed gag orders when they leased their land over). When the landowners still can't cover the decommissioning costs, it falls on the town... which means it falls on YOU, the taxpayer.

Still think this is an "individual choice" to lease over to big solar? This is a community-wide fiscally irresponsible decision that EVERY resident in that town should have the right to VOTE ON!

ORES removed our right to vote on solar and wind industrial complexes. They crushed our home rule into a million pieces.