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Springfield announces deal to buy solar power from Amherst development

Section of Vermont Regional Test Center for Solar Technology
Pat Bradley/WAMC
The city of Springfield, Massachusetts will purchase power from a solar farm that is planned for construction starting this spring at a former golf course in Amherst, Massachusetts. Pictured is a solar site in Vermont.

City says it will save $1.6 million in costs to power municipal buildings

The city of Springfield, Massachusetts has announced a deal to purchase all the power that will be generated by a solar farm that is being developed in Amherst.

According to an announcement by the office of Mayor Domenic Sarno, the city will purchase the power from the planned 6.2 megawatt facility at a 10 percent discount. This will save the city an estimated $1.6 million in electricity costs over 20 years.

It will move the city closer to achieving the goals of a climate action plan adopted in 2017.

WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill spoke with one of the authors of the climate plan, City Councilor Jesse Lederman.

Lederman is chairman of the City Council Sustainability and Environment Committee.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.