100-800 Points | Available to All Municipalities
The Build-Ready Program advances large-scale renewable energy projects on underutilized land, such as brownfields, landfills, former industrial sites, parking lots, and abandoned or existing commercial and industrial sites.
Working with local partners and stakeholders, the Build-Ready Program takes difficult sites and makes them “build-ready” for private renewable energy developers to ultimately construct and operate. The Build-Ready Program carries out the project design, engineering, permitting, and electric grid interconnection activities as well as developing a project host community benefit package. Once a site has reached specific develop milestones, the Build-Ready Program runs a competitive request for proposal to award and transfer the project to a private developer for final design, financing, construction, ownership, and operation and to procure Tier 1 Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) created through the production of renewable energy from the Build-Ready project.
Site Nomination
100 Points
Prior to submission, make sure the submission materials include:
The municipality must submit proof that a site in their municipality was submitted through the Build Ready program (e.g., a PDF of the nomination form or screenshot). An elected official, local community member, private company, or other interested party nominates a potential Build-Ready site using NYSERDA’s Large-Scale Renewables “Build-Ready” Site Nomination Form. Site eligibility requirements can be found here. Date of completion is when the site was nominated through the online form.
Site Selection
700 Points
Submission requirements:
Submit a copy of the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the municipality and NYSERDA. The Build-Ready Team has developed a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) to facilitate the study and potential development of a site prior to NYSERDA entering into a lease-option agreement or other formal agreement. The MOU is a non-binding preliminary document that provides for information-sharing and states that, if preliminary analysis indicates that a site is suitable for development under the Program, the parties will negotiate in good faith to enter into mutually agreeable site-control documents such as a lease-option agreement. Date of completion is when the MOU was executed.