Where are the tree huggers? Millions of trees felled for commercial solar in Upstate NY

I started to pull the numbers for tree felling that will occur at only 3 of the 36 total ORES solar and wind complexes in New York State. The totals shocked me.

They marketed commercial solar and wind to us as a “fix” for our ailing climate. It worked. People believed that if we started harvesting energy from the weather, then we’d lower our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, save the planet, fix the environment, and inch towards a utopian world in which oil and coal were “dirty” energy forms of the past.

The marketing around commercial solar and wind was so genius that it tricked people around the world into believing the “clean” and “green” approach to energy was that of a civilized, progressive future. It sounded good in pamphlets, college lectures, text book blurbs, and campaign slogans.

What started as virtue-signaling and pretentious rhetoric had to, at some point, become a physical reality. When they passed the 2019 CLCPA (Climate Act) in New York State, there was no consideration for what going “carbon neutral” would physically look like in real-time. But boy… watching Governor Cuomo sign the Climate Act made for a good photo op, though.

By 2020, the New York State legislature knew it needed to find a way around local zoning laws, moratoriums, and public sentiment to force commercial solar and wind into communities they knew wouldn’t want to host these industrial complexes. They came up with the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) that they snuck into the 2020 budget bill, in the dead of the night, without alerting anyone to their plan. It worked again.

By 2021, they knew they’d have to start building some of these ecological detention centers to justify the lofty promises made with the CLCPA. Since the state wasn’t prepared to oversee that kind of industrial rollout, they created ORES in a way where it defers all engineering, environmental assessments, and construction to the foreign renewable developers, absolving New York State, the Department of Public Serve, and the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) from having the “hard conversations” about what their virtual-signaling was about to do to our farmland, forests, grasslands, wetlands, and water.

Figuring the plebeians of New York State would go about their 9-to-5s, never questioning the details within these ORES complexes, the bureaucrats thought they had done it again. And in a way, they succeeded for a few years. They were able to site ecologically devastating projects and award final permits, as they do 100% of the time, to developers intent on grabbing their green energy subsidies and credits.

But greed makes people do sloppy things. When money and power are so accessible and unchecked, people, groups, and governments get lazy. They start flaunting their monetary gluttony a little too publicly. They start siting projects so devastatingly, like they did with Fort Edward Solar, that along the way, someone gets otherworldly angry. They start spreading themselves so thinly that the math catches up with the green energy grift.

In this article, we’re going to look at the math behind the trees and forests that stand in the way of transferring generational American land over to foreign renewable corporations.

Where are the tree huggers?

As it seems to me that those sitting at ORES missed fundamental science classes from middle school, let me start with the obvious here.

Trees and forests are among our planet’s most important natural air filtration systems. They do more than help clean the air; they sequester carbon from the atmosphere and store it in their leaves, trunks, branches, and roots. Through photosynthesis, they absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. They also help lower localized temperatures (ever notice the temperature drop when you walk into a forest?) through shade and by releasing water vapor from their leaves, a process known as transpiration. Forests help filter and store water in the soil, reduce erosion, and support countless plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms, forming the foundation of the ecosystems that sustain us.

That’s why the environmentalists of the past used to chain themselves to trees and camp out in their canopies. People used to stand in the way of bulldozers to save a singular tree. Knowing that it takes decades for trees to reach full maturity, and even longer to contribute to the development of mature forests, “tree huggers” used to risk their lives for trees around the world.

I consider myself to be a tree hugger. I would do the same. Trees and forests are the answer to every single climate problem scientists (who have been bought-and-paid for) claim we need to fix within our world today.

So how can it be… that a form of energy that’s supposedly green and “for the environment” results in the felling of millions of trees? Doesn’t that go against the science to which these people cling so religiously? It does. I’ve watched this phenomenon since I arrived on the scene this past September. I’ve watched people abandon their environmental beliefs to fall on their knees at the altar of solar panels and wind turbines.

I realized along the way there was not one person in the void here shouting out the obvious common sense that everyone else had abandoned: we are destroying our physical environment to save the environment.

South Ripley Solar

Let’s start with South Ripley Solar, which received its final permit from ORES in 2023.

South Ripley Solar is a 270MW solar facility with a 20MW BESS (battery energy storage system). The total project footprint is 2,000+ acres.

As you can see from the aerial maps (I included 3 of the 6 in total), significant forest resides at South Ripley Solar. It was reported that, at minimum, 220 acres of forest will be cleared for the solar panels.

In mature, dense forests, there can be anywhere from 600 to 1,000 trees per acre.

For 220 acres of mature forest to be cleared, using an average of 800 trees per acre, that's a loss of roughly 176,000 trees for a form of energy that's supposed to "save the climate."

And for those not familiar with Upstate NY, Ripley is located in the heavy Lake Effect Snow region of Western New York where it's common for the towns to receive 200+ inches of snow every winter. Ripley, New York only gets 159 days of partial sun throughout the year, or 50 days of fully sunny skies.

Oxbow Solar

Oxbow Solar is a 140MW ORES facility that was permitted in 2025. This complex will reside in the Town of Fenner in Madison County, New York.

In order to install the panels, developers will need to remove 150 acres of forest. That's around 110,000 to 120,000 mature trees, cut down, removed, and topsoil stripped to install something, again, we're told is going to "save the climate."

The NYISO (New York Independent System Operator) data out of Madison County shows Oxbow Solar will generate between 5% and 16% of nameplate capacity (7-23 MW monthly), not 140 MW. This is the same story for all ORES complexes, sited for one of the cloudiest/snowiest regions of the entire United States.

Moraine Solar

Moraine Solar, sadly, began its tree felling and forest clearing operations on February 23, 2026. It’s a 94MW solar complex that resides in Allegany County, New York. Approximately 154 acres of mature forest is being cleared, as we speak, to install this solar facility.

That’s 123,000 trees gone.

The total for all three of these ORES projects comes to 419,000 mature trees, cleared, for a form of energy that’s supposed to help our environment.

ORES has issued final permits to 36 projects to date.

Based off these three solar complexes, that comes to around 139,000 trees cleared per project. If that’s an average that holds true at all of the complexes (the wind complexes are 10x the size and include even more tree clearing - will be looking into this in future articles), that comes to 5,028,000 trees felled, at minimum, to sustain ORES’ rapid steamrolling of our New York State home rule.

I will say it again: where are the tree huggers? Where are the environmentalists? Where are the people who have an issue with cows grazing on open fields?

We are living through dark, dystopian times. But with knowledge there is power. And here is the cold, hard math that ORES doesn’t want you to know about its forest mutilation.

On a positive note, I have been working with musician John Rich to get this messaging to groups that have the power to do something about it. So stay tuned.

“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

- Nelson Henderson

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