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Help Albemarle County Lead the Clean Energy Transition!
Albemarle has an opportunity to lead the way to a clean energy future by bringing more solar to the County. As communities across the globe address the impending climate crisis and advance solutions that slow warming, solar power stands out as a key part of that effort. This petition gives Albemarle residents -and all surrounding community members (including Charlottesville residents)– a chance to make their voices heard on local climate mitigation.
The proposed solar project in the community of Woodridge, in Albemarle County, would generate nearly 400 GWh/year of electricity, enough to power some 30,000 homes, according to C3’s calculations. To better understand the project’s climate justice impacts, C3 applied its newly launched Solar Climate Justice Scorecard, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the following four key climate justice areas: (i) Procedural Justice, (ii) Distributional Justice, (iii) Restorative Justice, and (iv) Other Socio-Economic and Environmental Factors.
C3 is aware of the potential drawbacks that poorly planned solar projects can pose, which is what prompted us to thoroughly assess the project. We believe this project is the right choice for Albemarle County given the climate mitigation potential of this project as well as the thoughtful attention paid to environmental protection and public engagement.
We urge County Supervisors to grant the solar developer Hexagon Energy a special-use permit to add solar to the Woodridge site to support the project for the benefit of our local community and global climate health.
Project Benefits:
- Climate Justice: C3 scored the Woodridge project highly on procedural and distributional justice:
- Community feedback was ultimately included in the project design;
- The harms and benefits are not disproportionately distributed, and existing inequalities are not exacerbated.
- Other Socio-Economic and Environmental Factors: The project is expected to reduce carbon emissions and have a net climate change mitigating effect:
- We estimate that in the first year of operations, the clean energy directly created from the project will result in roughly 126,700 US tons of GHG emissions mitigated;
- The strategic location next to existing transmission lines prevents deforestation, and we estimate that for every mile that a new transmission line is prevented, the project could avoid the cutting down of 5,460 to 14,520 trees.
The just clean energy transition not only calls us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, but it also gives us the opportunity to increase participation in our energy system. We appreciate the opportunity to address this important issue in our County.
C3 and our fellow, undersigned community members offer our support for the Woodridge solar project and look forward to advancing climate action here at home.
Sincerely,
Albemarle County residents, local community members, and local organizations
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