How a New Generation of Farmers Hope to Save the Planet

As the co-founder of Community Power Partners (CPP), I’ve always regarded Community solar farming as a transactional business enterprise. I am a focused, dispassionate, profit-driven entrepreneur, routinely meeting with residents and community leaders interested in saving money on their electric bills. I nurture these relationships, applying logic, not emotion, to close a deal. When successful, along with my partners in solar photo-voltaic technology, I sell customers the system they need to harness the power of the sun.
My customers see a measurable reduction in their electric bills and, if I exceed their expectations (I always do) I’ll earn money on the deal and become more profitable by selling similar solar farming packages to communities throughout New York State. How do Community solar farms work? Solar farms are large collections of interconnected solar panels that work together to capture sunlight and turn it into electricity on a grand scale. My customers then subscribe to receive a portion of the solar production in the form of credits from the farm that match their electricity usage in their home or business. My customers are apartment dwellers, home renters, home owners, business owners, small businesses, large corporations and, occasionally, actual farmers who live in the same community where each solar farm is located and then share the savings when their farm begins to generate electricity.
Solar farming is an important part of the booming renewable energy industry (an industry expected to top $422 billion in sales by 2022).
Of course, these sunlight-harvesting farms have a positive effect on the environment by generating electricity without also producing greenhouse gases, the polluting side effect of traditional power plants that burn fossil fuel. Until recently, however, my main concerns were the economic benefits of Community Solar. Like my customers who told me they were joining forces to reduce their electric bills, I too have been focused on just one type of “green” — making money.
But that’s all changed…
In recent weeks my attitude about my customers and my business has undergone as fundamental a change as our planet’s environment. I now have an emotional connection with customers I did not have before. For reasons I explain below, I now regard solar farmers as unsung heroes in the fight against climate change. Furthermore, I believe they deserve greater economic, political and legal support as their numbers grow throughout the U.S. Solar farmers and the community of subscribers that support them by “buying” their product are literally on the front lines in the life-and-death struggle for the health of our planet. Just as traditional farmers in the nation’s heartland raise crops to feed the world, solar farmers who “feed” the energy needs of their neighbors will play an increasingly important role in saving our planet from the ravages of climate change.
Why do I now have such respect, even admiration, for the solar farmers I once looked at as no more than customers? Four reasons:
- Summer from Hell –Like my customers, I sweated through a very hot summer of 2019 (officially, summer ran from late June to late September). During this four month window, Americans saw the highest temperatures in recorded history, a high temperature trend that led to changes in weather patterns worldwide, such as record-breaking storms and heat, causing the earth’s overall temperature to rise by a half degree. There is universal agreement among scientists that inexorable effects of climate change are to blame. Before this summer, I thought climate change was a distant threat; not anymore.
• U.S. Visit of Greta Thunberg — In early September, Greta Thunberg, a 16-year old, Swiss teenager who has inspired climate change activism worldwide, visited the U.S. She gave an emotional speech to the United Nations that moved me, and I’m sure millions of other Americans, emotionally. She embarrassed members of the United Nations for not taking more aggressive action against climate change. I admit she had a similar effect on me.
• Fall from Hell — As a write this, worry about the weather has been replaced by genuine fear for tens of thousands of California residents who face, once again, deadly wildfires throughout the state, firestorms caused by a combination of hot and dry weather and record low rainfall. It’s the third straight year of record-breaking fires and sciences agree falls firestorms are likely to grow in size and spread to other states in our warming world. Last week, for the first time, I carried out research for myself and concluded that climate change is here and now and poses an immediate threat to me and my family. I admit that, like many Americans, I was in denial. Now I’m not.
• Solar Farmers (My Customers) Are an Army on a Mission — Whether driven by the three factors above, other weather-driven news or people, I’ve noticed a fundamental shift in the mindset of current customers and prospects in communities that are considering solar farming. There is a fast-rising tide of genuine worry about global warming in communities throughout the U.S. and that fear is driving more Americans to take action by investing in solar energy to save money and, in growing numbers, to join the fight against climate change. A Gallup poll from March found that Americans overwhelmingly favor expanding the production of green energy sources, particularly solar and wind. Around half also said they believed there should be less emphasis on coal power. Since the March survey, after enduring a hellish summer and the early days of another catastrophic fall fire season, I believe the number of Americans searching for green energy sources to power their homes has doubled. This is why solar farms are popping up across the country. Solar power is predicted to make up 50% of the nation’s renewable energy capacity in the next five years and solar farmers are big contributors to this growth. Whether they’re apartment renters, homeowners, business leaders or, in some cases, traditional farmers, residents in communities throughout the U.S. have joined forces to form a new type of farm in their backyard, a farm with a new cash crop — electricity. In the last few months, a growing number of customers have admitted their decision to subscribed to their local solar farms was driven less by a desire to save money and more by a fundamental desire to fight climate change.
I’m grateful that my own anxieties and fears that intensified over the summer have been reflected in a fundamental change in the mindset of my customers. Many of my partners in the solar power industry have seen the same change in their customers as well. I truly believe we are at a tipping point in our nation and our world regarding climate change and the life-altering decisions we must make, as individuals, as families, and as communities to save our planet.
As a human race, our goal, according to most environmental scientists, is to convert the entire world to 100% renewable energy by 2050, a goal that is both possible and affordable (as evidenced by the individual savings my customers get from subscribing to a community solar farm farm).
As individuals each of us faces two fundamental, alternate paths. We can do nothing or we can do something. If we do nothing, then we should at least support those in our community who decided to take a chance and broaden the definition of the American farmer by joining their ranks as American solar farmers and subscribers. You may not think of them as unsung heroes in the war on climate change, as I do, but you should at least admire them for making the smart decision to saving money on their electric bill. Because of growing pressures from our government, community leaders, friends and family, and the constant reminders we’re likely to experience in the form of worsening natural disasters, you will likely arrive at a similar crossroads in your life. You’ll have to decide whether to do nothing or, as Russian writer Leo Tolstoy described it, “Add Your Light to the sum of light.”
Whether you do it for practical, economic reasons or out of concern for the environment, if you don’t have a solar farm in your community, you should consider forming one. The evidence is now overwhelming that you’ll not only reduce your electric bill but also play a small but distinct role in the fight against global warming. To win this war in the few years scientists say we have left to wage a successful battle, we should all become soldiers.
To win this war, we should all become solar farmer.

Michael Mollin is a renewable energy expert and a co-founder of Community Power Partners (CPP), speaks at eco-friendly events and trade shows in New York and along the East Coast. Mollin has become a passionate and evangelical proponent of community solar farming.
