Improving solar development policy and planning through stakeholder engagement: The Long Island Solar Roadmap Project

The Long Island Solar Roadmap Project involves a collaborative research approach with multiple organizational entities and actors engaged in a stakeholder driven process. Long Island is a space-constrained region with a steep urban to rural gradient, resulting in a complex suite of local governments, development priorities, and utility, planning, and development actors. This project is integrating technological, economic, and social data into a spatial planning output that allows decision makers to see where mid-to-large scale solar development (capacity of 250 kW and larger) is technically, economically, and socially feasible. This spatial output involves innovative methods of evaluating site suitability based on criteria developed by stakeholders. The project’s stakeholder and partnership driven approach allow the team to consider technological and economic feasibility across a wide variety of solar development forms and financial models. Social science data collected via a residential electric utility ratepayer survey is used to examine the perceptual barriers and opportunities for solar development as well as the sites and types of solar development that community members are most likely to support. The Long Island Solar Roadmap Project is an example of how research and community engagement can improve solar development policy and planning.