Our Mission
Municipal Solar Partners is a non-profit solar development firm dedicated to partnering with municipalities to build municipally owned projects that maximize financial and social benefits to the community.
What We Do
We simplify and de-risk the development process for municipalities so better solar projects get built faster. MSP provides our services at no cost to the municipality. Here’s what we do:
We work with with your municipality to determine site feasibility.
We fund early stage pre-development costs such as utility interconnection studies and preliminary engineering.
We provide an economic analysis of the potential community benefit flows of the project.
If selected through your municipal procurement process, we provide full scale development services, securing project financing, completing permitting processes, and building and managing engineering, design and construction teams.
We work with your municipality to secure any available tax credits and identify operations and maintenance management contractors so that the projects are self-managed.
As billions of dollars flow towards the energy transition, we believe municipalities and their residents should share in the financial benefits by owning their own solar. Municipalities already own infrastructure like buildings, highway facilities, or water treatment plants – solar can act just like these assets while also generating surplus revenues that can be put towards community benefits like energy bill savings for economically vulnerable residents, new funding for community programs, workforce development training, and other municipal savings.
Municipalities have important advantages in the solar development process:
Municipalities have access to underutilized land that is suitable for solar development
Municipalities are at the center of the permitting process and can help ensure projects are developed quickly, responsibly, and serve the needs of the community
Municipalities have access to cheaper forms of project debt, like bond financing, that can make public projects cheaper to develop
Municipalities can build “behind the meter” solar leading to significant financial savings
Municipalities often have Climate Action Plans and must build local renewable energy in order to fulfill their commitments
Municipalities are public bodies that are accountable to the community
Why municipal ownership?
Our Leadership Team
Mike Rauch, Senior Advisor, is a renewable energy project development professional with well over a decade of experience in renewable energy and public policy. His experience includes development of utility-scale wind energy projects, financing commercial solar energy projects, and developing community energy savings initiatives. He’s supported the development, origination and financing of over 500MW of renewable energy projects while working for Apex Clean Energy, BQ Energy and Clean Capital. He earned a Masters of Public Administration from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a Bachelors of Science from the School of Natural Resources at the University of Vermont.
Jason Angell has worked to create an equitable renewable energy transition as a nonprofit leader and local elected official. He spearheaded the creation of a CCA in 2019 that has moved 40,000 people in the Hudson Valley to cheaper, 100% New York State renewable energy. His initiative working with the Ecological Citizen's Project to develop a community-owned solar project in Peekskill that maximizes community benefits received the U.S. DoE Community Power Accelerator prize. Jason has first-hand knowledge of the operations and interests of municipalities as a Philipstown Councilperson. He earned a Masters in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Vassar College.
Partner with us
If you are a municipal official interested in reaching out to MSP regarding our services please contact our team at info@municipalsolar.org and we will be in touch as soon as possible.