In a suburb about an hour north of New York City, a former dairy farm is now producing solar energy.
Some of the people who will benefit live nearby, while others are dozens of miles away in Yonkers, which borders the Bronx, or in Downtown Brooklyn.
The 20-acre farm, in Yorktown, N.Y., is part of a community solar initiative, which allows people without their own solar power installations to opt into systems in other neighborhoods or towns.
In New York City’s dense, urban setting, where limited space can make installing solar panels impossible and where many people rent their homes, community projects are the only option some residents have for making a shift to solar power.
Property owners involved in such projects lease their land or rooftops to solar developers, who sell the power that is generated to a utility company. The utility adds renewable energy to the electric grid. A project’s subscribers get a discount on their utility bills, usually in the range of 5 to 20 percent.
In the past five years, the number of community solar projects in New York City and Westchester County, where Yorktown is, has mushroomed, to 700 from 72. About 78,000 households, a small but growing portion of the area served by Con Edison, the city’s utility company, now participate.
Across New York State, where community solar initiatives were first introduced about 10 years ago, the projects have grown to serve about 400,000 households, according to a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a research arm of the federal Energy Department.
But even as community solar projects become more popular, they may be in jeopardy. President Trump, on the first day of his second term, moved to slow the advance of renewable energy. It is possible his administration could pressure Congress to remove or amend federal tax credits and other benefits that make installing solar panels more affordable. City and state officials, and solar developers, are preparing for an uncertain future.
“We don’t have a crystal ball,” said Louise Yeung, the chief climate officer for the New York City comptroller’s office, which is leading an effort to increase access to affordable solar power in the city. “We’re trying to do all of the administrative things that we can control on our end to make sure funding is secure.”
Pete Harckham, a Democratic state senator who represents parts of Westchester County and the Hudson Valley, is introducing several solar-related bills this year, including one that would double state tax credits for residential installations.
“The writing is on the wall,” Mr. Harckham said. “Under this president, the federal government is going to get out of clean energy incentives and it’s up to the states to lead.”
Across the country, community solar power has surged from just a few megawatts in 2015 to nearly 8,000 — enough, roughly, to power more than one million homes — by June 2024, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory report. Nearly three-quarters of the country’s 3,404 community solar projects so far are in four states: New York, Florida, Massachusetts and Minnesota, the report said.
In a city like New York where most residents do not own their own homes or who live in co-op buildings with shared common areas, community solar projects are a practical way to reduce greenhouse emissions and lower energy bills, said Anika Wistar-Jones, a director at Solar One, a nonprofit organization focused on sustainability issues.
Ben Pearcy, a projection designer for Broadway shows who lives in a Brooklyn co-op, has saved about $730 since enrolling in a community solar project two years ago. “I wish I could be generating solar power directly myself,” Mr. Pearcy, 53, said. “But since I can’t, this seemed like the next best thing.”
Some energy experts hope federal tax credits for solar power will remain intact considering that investment in renewable energy sources has given the U.S. economy a lift, particularly in congressional districts represented by Republicans.
“Forget the climate change aspect, if you want to meet the needs of the economy, you need to continue to develop renewables,” said Dan Giuffrida, the chief executive of Plankton Energy, a New York City solar developer.
But Mr. Trump has already halted federal permits for new wind farms. And although he “doesn’t have the same antagonism to solar as he does to wind, Trump is a wild card,” Michael B. Gerrard, an environmental law professor at Columbia University, said. “There is no telling how far he’ll go to support fossil fuels, and so far Congress has been quite pliant.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Across New York City, community solar projects can be found on rooftops at Brooklyn shopping centers, universities in the Bronx and public housing complexes in Queens. Projects in development include a parking lot canopy at Kennedy Airport, one atop the Bronx Terminal Market and another at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park section.
The Sunset Park project takes the community solar concept further. Those who participate will share ownership of the 45,000-square-foot installation with the developer.
“Revenue from the project will be reinvested into a community wealth fund,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, the executive director of UPROSE, the nonprofit group that organized the joint venture.
After the farm ceased dairy operations in the 1950s, the family that owned it began to slowly sell parcels. For a few decades, it was a bucolic family retreat until relatives died or moved away.
Leasing to a solar developer was a great use for the remaining 20 acres, said Kathryn Hoenig, a former lawyer whose family has owned the farm since 1840. “It’s a good economic and environmental solution to using the land in a thoughtful way as well as making money and keeping it in the family,” she said.
One of the project’s prominent subscribers is a high-end property in Downtown Brooklyn, 505 State Street, the city’s first all-electric residential tower.
Another core subscriber is an affordable housing property in Yonkers, where residents said they struggle to pay their energy bills. Related Affordable, which owns the 343-unit property and signed onto the community project in December, expects the building’s overall electric costs to decrease by about 20 percent starting this month.
At the moment, there are federal and state tax credit incentives for community solar programs that serve low-income residents.
Catholic Charities Brooklyn & Queens, which operates about 40 affordable housing properties across the city, took advantage of the credits to expand its ambitious solar energy portfolio.
Asked about the uncertain future of renewable energy tax credits and benefits, David Downs, one of the organization’s vice presidents, said: “We are working as quickly as possible.”
Patty Dwyer, 73, a retired nurse with limited income, lives in one of the group’s buildings. In addition to money-saving strategies like canceling her cable television service, she also signed up for community solar three years ago.
“Now, I probably save about $75 a year,” she said. “Solar is 100 percent better, forget about it.”
