About Gwendolyn Craig

Gwen is an award-winning journalist covering environmental policy for the Explorer since January 2020. She also takes photos and videos for the Explorer's magazine and website. She is a current member of the Legislative Correspondents Association of New York. Gwen has worked at various news outlets since 2015. Prior to moving to upstate New York, she worked for a D.C. Metro-area public relations firm, producing digital content for clients including the World Health Organization, the Low Income Investment Fund and Rights and Resources Initiative. She has a master's degree in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. She has bachelor's degrees in English and journalism, with a concentration in ecology and evolutionary biology, from the University of Connecticut. Gwen is also a part-time figure skating coach. Contact her at (518) 524-2902 or gwen@adirondackexplorer.org. Sign up for Gwen’s newsletter here.

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Comments

  1. upstater says

    Does the software tool highlight brownfield sites?

    New York State has an abundance of brownfield sites of former industrial plants. Generally there are transmission lines around these wastelands. In Syracuse we have thousands of acres of the former Allied Chemical waste beds and capped dredgings from Onondaga Lake. I was in Niagara Falls recently and there are huge abandonded industrial sites. Benson Mines seems like a good candidate site; the transmission lines are still there.

    Yet the obvious preference for solar developers is to build on agricultural lands or scenic open spaces. I am all for renewables, but how about having preferences for brownfield sites and restrictions on other areas? Or improve incentives for residential systems (our 5KW system has zeroed out our supply charges for 13 years!) instead of incentivizing large developers.

    • Former Dacker says

      Great points,Upstate. In addition to brownfields, all former industrial sites should be evaluated for solar array potential.

  2. Park Ethics says

    IT’S CALLED “THE ADIRONDACK PARK!” It’s WILDERNESS! SOLAR AND WIND POWER ARE ENERGY INDUSTRIES and DO NOT BELONG ANYWHERE IN THE PARK! Restrict Solar to solar powered roof shingles within the park! and wind power to micro-wind next to a house to power only a small battery for the house. INDUSTRIAL SOLAR AND WIND SHOULD BE RESTRICTED TO OUTSIDE THE PARK AND ON THE ROOFS OF UGLY Shopping Malls etc.

    Clearly, the human species intends to destroy all of nature and replace it with technology, which is not living-it’s really just Dead material. Nature is LIFE.

  3. Tourist Family says

    If our family from Long Island were to go to the Adirondacks and see just 1 solar array, we would consider our drive to a spoiled “wilderness forest” to have been a waste of time, and WE WILL NOT RETURN TO THE ADIRONDACKS. We will look at online photos of Adirondack forests instead of wasting time driving to see them destroyed and replaced by solar or wind or cell towers etc. Even if you screen them, but they are there, we won’t go to the Dacks for vacations. We’ll boycott the Dacks

  4. adkresident says

    An industry accepted number is 12.2% capacity. What that means is an array that is stated to have 100,000 watts actually produces 12,200 watts. It is much lower due to the location.

    In AZ it is high, NY low and USA average is 12.2%.

    12,200 watts per hour, between 10am and 2pm sounds like a lot.

    Consider NYS peak load is 33,500 Mega Watts, that is 33,500 x 1,000,000

    or

    33,500,000,000 watts

  5. Some guy from northville says

    Solar farms might as well be paved parking lots. You want renewables in the ADKs? Maybe geothermal, or wind, or hydro. Solar may be green but it’s not exactly beneficial when you’re requiring the removal of native flora and fauna. There are plenty of places to derive solar power, like the roofs of buildings. The Adirondack park is not one of them.

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