No, this is not The Onion. Trees will be cut in pursuit of solar power.
Last night the Finance Committee approved Part B of docket item #133-15, authorizing the mayor to negotiate leases for solar carports on the parking lots of the Newton Free Library and Newton South High School. (Part A , involving solar panels at Rumford Ave and on the roofs of a several schools and other city buildings – but not City Hall, and carports at Elliot St DPW, had already been approved.)
The company that would lease the city-owned sites and construct, operate, and maintain the solar panels for a 20-year lease period is Ameresco Solar, Inc. The city would buy the energy produced through a Power Purchase Agreement, and Ameresco would receive federal income tax credits for solar that are apparently what makes the project financially feasible.
I had expressed concern to the Board of Aldermen last year that solar panels in parking lots with trees would cause problems for pruning trees that appeared to be very close to the panels, and that a solar company would not want tree branches shading their panels.
But it turns out they don’t want trees at all. Ameresco representatives told me last night after the meeting that they would be cutting all the trees on the two Library parking lot islands that would have solar carports. The carport design they are using is a continuous V-shaped cross section that doesn’t even have a gap in the middle for tree trunks. (The southernmost island will not get carports because there is ‘too much’ shade from the trees along the boundary of the Newton Cemetery.)
Not only did the Library trustees approve the solar panels, Building Commissioner Josh Morse told me they actually would like to get rid of the grass berms to fit in more parking spaces. (So much for promoting biking and public transit.) He called keeping the grass berms and getting rid of trees a “compromise.” (And the grass berms will be under the carports — how will that work out?)
I find the idea of cutting down trees for solar distressing and counterproductive. The Library parking lot is one of the few in the city, maybe the only one, that comes close to meeting the zoning requirement of one tree for every ten parking spaces. New trees were planted only about three years ago to replace trees that were dead or dying. These include large-maturing species like maples and disease resistant American elms, that would eventually provide a beautiful green canopy over the parking lot. The NSHS lot does not have as many trees as it should, but at least two of the main parking lot trees look like they will be casualties of the carports, if I’m interpreting the aerial view rendering correctly.
We would be losing the other benefits of the trees including aesthetic, air 
quality, bird and insect habitat, and storm water retention, the last of which is particularly relevant in the prone to flooding Library parking lot.
On the Finance Committee, only Lenny Gentile raised any concerns, and only about the Library carports. He feels that the Library and City Hall are the hub of the city, and it’s the wrong thing to do for only about $17,000. (I’m not sure if this represents the city’s electric savings, or what, from the Library carports.)
The solar proposal has already been approved by Public Facilities, so the next step would be the full City Council.
How do others feel?
I have neighbors who have cut down trees to “go green”. I think “missing the forest for the trees” is more applicable. Newton has an policy, on record, of promising to plant trees in parking lots, not cut them down, for goodness sake!
Right before Robert Garrity left the city as its Director of Sustainability, the Village Future Planning in Waban had him as a guest to join in the discussion. One of the things that stood out in the conversation was “you don’t cut down trees for solar.” We have yet to invent anything as efficient, resilient, and effective as trees so the idea of cutting them down to put in solar panels is tragic.
@Julia, do you know if the city has looked at other parking lots that do not have trees (or at least as many trees) which could be equally well suited for solar panels?
I believe these panels are not appropriate for the library parking lot. Their next idea will be along the Commonwealth Av carriages path.
@Jess, I don’t know if they looked at other parking lots, but considering that they were going to put them on the roof of City Hall, it appears they were trying to do as many sites as possible.
Perhaps they needed to be on parking lots that are adjacent to city buildings, in order to connect to the grid through a city meter, but I’m just guessing there. Either way, rather than taking up space in parking lots which can and should have trees, I would rather see panels on places that can’t have trees, so Rumford Ave and school roofs are great. But how about panels over a portion of the bleachers at our high school fields, which could also shelter spectators from wind and rain? I would like to see solar panels where they are an unambiguous benefit, not causing us to give up something else of value.
I believe this attempt to redesign the library parking lot is a very bad idea.
This will face additional conversation and scrutiny at the City Council meeting as this plan, though well thought out, seems way over the top!!
I would like to add, even though I’m still trying to verify the details, that the City Council is being pressured to act quickly on this because of something called SREC II, which in English is a Commonwealth of Massachusetts incentive program that has an aggregate cap (measured in megawatt generating capacity of accepted projects), without which these solar installations would not be financially viable. (Maybe two separate caps, one for projects under 25kiloWatt (likely mostly residential), and one for projects over 25kW.) Google SREC II and you will see that information is flying right and left about the impending, or already reached cap. I can’t verify the accuracy, but for masochists/geeks, here is a relatively coherent example (please Rt-click or Cmd-click to open in a new tab): http://solarvane.com/news/how-real-is-the-massachusetts-srec-ii-crunch/ For perpective, it appears from the Newton solar projects presentation included with the Finance Committee agenda, the total of Newton’s projects is 1,866 kW capacity, or about 1.9 MB, with individual installations ranging from 11 kW for the Fire Station 10 roof, to 737 kW for the Elliot St DPW canopies. I don’t know, but have asked, whether all the non-controversial Newton solar projects (Rumford and roof panels) have already been submitted to the state and are in the pipeline for approval, or whether they’ve been held pending resolution of the Library and NSHS locations. I hope it was the former! So I have to respectfully disagree with anyone who thinks we’d be cutting trees or forgoing planting more trees at… Read more »
Hi Julia, I was concerned about this as well. So checked with the Chair of PF and with Josh Morse of Public Buildings. The plan is to transplant the small trees and Marc Welch will be evaluating the trees. I was told some are not very healthy. The grass berms will stay. There solar canopies may also aid in reducing stormwater runoff. I agree that it is important to take a careful look at the pros and cons of this project before making a decision. Here are the minutes of the PF Committee meeting where the library parking lot was discussed; The canopies are 13’ high and would be below the tree line, which would make them camouflaged from abutting residences. The canopies would also provide shade and cover from the elements for vehicles at the library and the school. There is also LED lighting under the canopies, which would enhance public safety after nightfall. The canopies are a steel structure that can be finished in a variety of durable (baked on enamel) colors. It may be necessary to remove some trees located on concrete islands in the library parking lot to install the canopies. The trees are unhealthy but the Tree Warden will look at them to determine if they could be transplanted. There was a suggestion that it may be possible to address some of the storm water runoff issues in the Library parking lot through this project. The Commissioner stated that the Administration is looking at different… Read more »
Oh, what a tough call. I have many panels on my own roof, which fuel my electric car and more. I haven’t paid an electric bill in years! Still, placing panels here seems all wrong. Every time I sit in a chair in my dentist’s office over by the new Wegman’s, I stare at the empty rooftops in that mall and at the one across the street- with no trees in sight. Solar power makes perfect sense there. It seems foolish to cut down those trees in the lot at the library. We can generate solar power in other places without the sacrifice.
I think it is great that the city is pursuing more solar including solar carports. I’ve had solar on my house for 2 years and it is doing even better than projected. It will be saving me a lot of money and saving a lot of carbon emissions. But, I love research so I had to look up a comparison between CO2 saved by a tree and CO2 saved by solar panels.
Here is what I found from another city looking at this same issue. One tree stores about 0.5 metric tons of CO2 over its lifetime. Producing a 5kWh solar array (about the size of mine), takes about 10 metric tons of CO2. Meanwhile during its lifetime, that solar array would offset 103 metric tons of CO2! (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/solar-panels-vs-public-trees-sergio-panunzio) I don’t know the details of the sizes of the carport solar arrays and the number of trees but it would be easy to figure out the carbon savings with the solar.
My daughter goes to Newton South and those parking lots would be great places for carports. The trees are not in good shape, there are woods right near the school and there are many places near the school where more trees could be planted.
I love trees. I’m an avid gardener. But, I also love my kids so I try to do as much as I can to slow down carbon emissions and climate change.
@Kathy, I too like research. I’m concerned if one considers only one aspect of the many benefits of trees such as carbon savings, we overlook their many other endowments such as cooling down the atmosphere, providing shade, transforming CO2 into oxygen, absorbing huge amounts of water, and more. I’m all in for solar and alternative energy to get off fossil fuels ASAP. I’m all for replanting and planting more trees to regain our canopy in Newton. I believe those objectives are synergistic and fully achievable if we are careful and plan well.
@Kathy, thank you for the feedback. I don’t think as many trees are at risk at the NSHS lot. Looking at the diagram in the presentation, I only saw two that seemed to conflict, the rest being on separate islands, but I’m going over to look with that diagram. I will also check the condition of the trees. They are probably due for pruning, and the trees that were planted when the NSHS renovation/expansion was done are recent enough that our volunteer Newton Citizen Pruners group can work on them. I think they were planted in the mid-2000s. The contractor never removed the stakes (which trees are better off without anyway), and by 2008 many were flopping around on their straps, and it was a few years before we had a tree crew, so I went around and removed them. In 2010 we did a Citizen Pruners session over there and did all the trees, which was the first pruning for the newer trees, but I’m not sure they’ve been done since. We have a city tree crew again but most of their time is spent on dead & hazard tree removals and pruning of larger trees. Like Chris, I’m reluctant to look at trees on just a basis of cost or carbon impact. By that reasoning, one might argue for solar carports anywhere cars park, in our village centers or along residential streets. I think that would result in a very sterile environment, more like the car rental areas… Read more »
One article on the web says as a rule of thumb that if you cut down 50 trees for a home solar installation, you’ve cancelled out your co2 benefit. The article neglects the baseline co2 and pollution involved with manufacturing and installing the units, so the number is probably much lower — 50 is a best case scenario. The table in the finance agenda says the library will have 4144 panels, which seems high and based on the reported area works out to 3.1 sq ft per panel vs. 20.7 for the roof top panels, so perhaps a spreadsheet typo in there somewhere? If the annual output number (245,919 Kw-hr/yr) is correct, the library install will be about the same as fifty 5000 KW-hr residential units, so by that math 2500 trees could be taken before the project would be net warming the planet. Even if the rule of thumb above is off by a factor of 10, environmentally the library install is a good idea. Where the city could possibly do better is in the financial arrangement — Is there a document with the details? Our home residential unit will pay for itself in about 3 years and then yield significant cash flow over the next 7 with energy produced and SRECS credits, and then still more for the remaining life of the unit (at least 10 more) after SRECS go away. If you assume each KW-hr saved is worth about $0.25 and also yields $0.25 in SREC credit,… Read more »
Possibly we could combine this revolutionary Library Carport idea with a revenue producing hamburger stand? Yes this is ridiculous but let’s take another look at the library carports and think of the legacy of our decisions.
Like so much of what goes on civically in Newton the drip drip of ideas, like a few pathetic solar panels in the cities main library parking lot, really doesn’t answer the question of how do we address the major problem of really providing power from the sun.
It seems to me we should be looking for a macro solution, which might be addressed by thinking about where some really large areas where a serious solar farm might be installed.
The state took a large swath of property from Newton when it built the turnpike through the city. We should look finally for some retribution from the state in the form of the right to utilize the north side of the length of the turnpike, which, facing south, would be a great site for miles long surfaces of solar energy. This would be a serious source that would make a real difference in gaining power for the city.
But are we able to think big ? I doubt it ???
[…] lot’s been happening, including blizzards of emails, since I wrote about this issue back on March 15. It turns out it’s very hard to save trees from well-meaning solar advocates. To recap, in I […]
Why carports? If the city wants solar energy (good idea) then panels should be set at an angle equal to local latitude (about 42 deg.) not near horizontal as they are. With panels near horizontal they intercept only about 74% of the sunlight they would receive if the panels were perpendicular to the angle of the sun which (at noon) varies by +/- 23.5 degrees over the course of the year. Making carports out of solar panels is wasting a quarter of their potential energy production