Building a Sustainable Future with Ty Baccile - E134

Ty Baccile, Director of Solar Development at New Energy Equity and a Board Member of NYSEA, shares his career journey and insights from the renewable energy sector. The conversation covers:

• Ty’s career journey from his blue-collar roots in upstate New York to pioneering wind and solar projects.
• Scaling community solar and driving economic growth through local development.
• The role of innovation, collaboration, and data in tackling challenges.
• Navigating evolving policies and development timelines.
• A future-focused strategy blending innovation with community respect.

Check out New Energy Equity at https://www.newenergyequity.com/

Tune in now for an inspiring conversation on innovation, resilience, and the future of energy!

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

Transcript

00:01.98

James McWalter

Hello, today we're speaking with Tai Basili, Director of Solar Development at New Energy Equity and on the Board of Directors of NYSEA. Welcome to the podcast, Tai.

00:09.72

Ty Baccile

Hey James, great to be here today. Appreciate the invite.

00:13.12

James McWalter

Absolutely. um To start with, we'd love to hear a little bit about yourself and how you ended up working in solar.

00:19.73

Ty Baccile

Yeah, great. So again, my name is Ty Basili. I'm from ah a small town and in an upstate New York in the Finger Lakes region, Horseheads. Married, blessed with three kids. um Coming into solar, I grew up, you know, in in an entrepreneurial blue collar.

00:38.14

Ty Baccile

ah family and went to college and after getting a bachelor's degree, you know, kind of just went out in the world looking for opportunity. I was fortunate enough to come out of college at the time of some other energy exploration opportunities and just you know really started at the bottom working at working in ah linear projects right-of-way projects electric transmission gas pipeline ah that kind of evolved into to wind energy wind energy projects evolved into large-scale solar large-scale solar evolved into community solar and really it was just um

01:14.65

Ty Baccile

an evolution of of ah building blocks of one small opportunity after the next. um But specifically at New Energy Equity, um early in my community solar career, I was working at a small development shop. ah we We weren't well capitalized. We didn't have all the resources. And we um had a joint development agreement with New Energy Equity, and I was the lead developer and had transacted with them and got to know the senior leadership.

01:41.49

Ty Baccile

And then you fast forward a couple of years after that. and And I got a call one day from our our president, Josh Kunkel, who had remembered me. We built that relationship and we talked about what, you know.

01:52.26

Ty Baccile

how could we come together, right? And um you know and I pitched him you know my vision of ah building a local presence here in New York, opening an office, um contributing to the local economy, and and and believing that an in-person team could be the best team out there. And you know we were able to agree on that and and and come together, and that was about two and a half years ago.

02:15.19

James McWalter

Super interesting. You know, ah looking at the kind of different firms that you work with over the years um lead up to energy equity. um Some of them, you know, not all of them are very large, but I think most of them are very, very well regarded. I guess what are some of the commonalities of like the best renewable development companies and what do they share?

02:34.12

Ty Baccile

They share a belief in their people, right? So you don't need to be a 150 person company. You can be a five person company. um But all those people share a common goal um all the and believe in in what they're doing and believe they can achieve the outcome. They're not focused on their failures. They're not focused on how much money they have or what their peers are doing.

02:56.77

Ty Baccile

you like you know Really, the companies and their people wake up every day um believing in their goals and what they need to accomplish, and they're they're solely focused on driving it forward and what needs to be done to achieve it.

03:11.19

James McWalter

I fully agree with that. Myself and our leadership team think about a lot when we're trying to build out build up Paces as well. It always ah comes down to the quality of people.

03:19.38

Ty Baccile

It's a focus on today, and not tomorrow.

03:22.37

James McWalter

Absolutely. um I guess in looking through you know that those kind of early days, you know you you worked on ah a lot obviously a lot of different project types, ah very large scale, solar wind, et cetera.

03:33.49

James McWalter

um I guess in terms of, let's say, your approach or what how you've seen the industry approach development, has that shifted at all over the years?

03:41.11

Ty Baccile

you know I don't know so much as the industry has shifted. I think that as we attend our our conferences and and we do reading and reflection, you know I think that there's a lot of big picture ideas on how to evolve or strategies to evolve. And there's there's no one size fit all solution. But if I think to what is generally been successful for the organizations I've worked for and and the projects that I've led is You know, just a very solution, solution focused approach ah where we're using data analytics like paces to identify what's going on on the ground, not so much to arrive at.

04:24.54

Ty Baccile

um the answer, but to arrive at the starting point. So to kind of build around what we need to do to be successful. And and very often, and I think maybe this has evolved, but you know in the past, you you know you know maybe teams have used data analytics to arrive at not developing a project. Whereas we try to use data analytics to arrive at how we're going to develop the project.

04:48.78

James McWalter

That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, one of the things we hear about a lot is getting to know faster, right? And I think that's still like an important component of it, right? The opportunity cost of spending a lot of time on a project that's super unlikely to get all the way to NTP is obviously very, very high.

04:57.31

Ty Baccile

Tim.

05:05.22

James McWalter

But agreed. I think as things become more sophisticated, not just what we're working on, but a lot of smart people are working on related problems, we think that, yeah,

05:17.45

James McWalter

like the idea yeah the the The fantasy I think is, you know could you say at the moment you see a site, the likelihood of reaching NTP? Obviously, the dynamic system, things like gears, like that's literally you know impossible.

05:30.00

James McWalter

But I think one of the things that a lot of folks you know are trying to see, can we get closer to that answer earlier in the stage so that we don't have folks spending a lot of time on projects that that may not make sense?

05:35.76

Ty Baccile

Yeah.

05:39.83

Ty Baccile

sometimes i Sometimes James, I think that when you are able to find the project and that is perfect, the the opportunity has already passed you. And sometimes, and I think this kind of goes into a little bit of our development philosophy, whereas um you want to identify opportunities that fit basic parameters and then identify what needs to change or evolve for it to work.

06:06.14

Ty Baccile

and then be very nimble and scrappy with it. you know Be very transparent with your landowners. Be be very transparent um with your stakeholders. And it may take years for that project to mature to a point where it's ready to invest in but a versus taking every project and just starting to invest and starting to assume the success. It's really about, a lot of project failure comes from you know maybe overspending on it early or over assumptions of success versus really just trying to you know almost play a game of Tetris, so to speak, with with these opportunities and and identify like, what do we need to do this year yeah for the number of megawatts and number of projects and and and and and the financial outcomes of them? And then what building blocks are going to get there this year versus what ones we can set aside and monitor that may come to fruition next year?

06:58.21

James McWalter

Yeah, I think a lot about um the kind of ah the timeline and the risks associated with that. Right. So, you know, and the background originally ah in you financial services, you know, like stock market equities and and data associated with those. And folks are always looking for arbitrage opportunities. Right. Where is there something under priced?

07:18.24

James McWalter

And I think one of the kind of interesting things in development space is there's these like kind of hot regions, right? And you have a hot region for some time period and, you know, people will pour in.

07:23.92

Ty Baccile

Tara.

07:27.55

James McWalter

And then you have, you know, you're kind of stalwarts, places that have had in particular for community solar, you know, programs for a while, a place like New York, etc. um But, you know, all of a sudden it's like, oh, like everyone's very, very excited about Michigan or very, you know, people are very excited about a state or Arizona until, you know, the community solar law passed there. It wasn't as as exciting as as both folks thought about. ah And one of the things we, you know, I was talking to somebody else about recently, I was like, oh, you know, there's probably like all of these other, not super low hanging fruit, but like opportunities, like no one's doing DG solar in Oklahoma.

07:58.19

James McWalter

And maybe there's no opportunity for DG solar in Oklahoma. There's certainly no community solar law. But like there might be other attributes because the land is so cheap and there might be like ah you know a-op or a muni that might be interested in a program. And it would be completely green space for developers to go into there. Now, of course, you know we developers also have to manage you know their own capital partners to make sure that it aligns with with the strategies, et cetera. um But I guess, like how do you think about you know where to ah to kind of assess risk as you're kind of weighing up different markets?

08:29.25

Ty Baccile

You know, as we look at opportunity, you know, we we try, you know, in our, you know, kind of our flywheel, it's strategically and with scale. um And, but sometimes it's not both together, right? So sometimes you, so like, for example, you can have scale in an Illinois, in a New York, in a Minnesota, a Virginia, where, you know, we ended that market timely.

08:56.11

Ty Baccile

um and we invested in people and processes um and innovation. And innovation really to me means more trust in your people to go out there and find the solutions. Like there's not a corporate answer. Someone is going to figure it out and you trust them.

09:11.80

Ty Baccile

versus, um you know, strategically, which is working with great local partners, you know, like one, we you know, our pillars of success are kind of two-pronged or three-pronged. We have, you know, our origination, our great internal land agent and GIS analyst team.

09:29.00

Ty Baccile

Then we have co-development partnerships where we identify the local realtors, the commercial realtors. We we identify the small emerging developer commercial developer in a state without a program. And and then we have acquisitions where you know're we're out there on the business development side. And so on the strategic side, you know,

09:49.41

Ty Baccile

We may not understand that niche program in Pennsylvania that allows for two megawatt sites if you have an off-taker within two miles, or we might not know that the the Illinois co-op program or a carve-out in California that still allows community solar type projects to move forward in a small utility in a larger scale. We might not know the pillars to success on those,

10:14.16

Ty Baccile

But because of our willingness to to look at the pillars of success success in different ways, we can, with more strategically, go out there and find those opportunities and kind of prove the concepts before we scale them.

10:31.02

James McWalter

And so I guess then, you know how do you kind of think about the opportunities for new energy equity you know going forward?

10:38.31

Ty Baccile

Yeah, you know, ah we we have some we have some great opportunities ahead of us. and you know I think we're equally as consumed as other developers on what the next emerging market is and placing resources and land acquisition resources in them to identify and secure opportunities, you know, with a long-term vision that it might not be today or tomorrow. um You know, just like retrospectively looking back to 2019, 2020, 2021 and thinking about opportunities that may be where we left behind.

11:08.65

Ty Baccile

you know, when we had a five-year development term ah on an option because we were so worried about the program not being funded that year. The development stage of a project, most landowners are very willing to see a long-term vision and sometimes we can be very short-minded on that. and we We have to be long-term focused. And so although we're waiting for that next new market to emerge or that in or you know finding that local partner to to do a work in a niche in the same sense, I think there's just as much opportunity over the next five years in New York, in Illinois, in Minnesota, where the it's not going to be plug and play anymore. You're not just going to be able to start a development shop

11:55.47

Ty Baccile

or scale your team and just go in and sign 200 leases and assume a 40% success rate and at this many dollars per watt, and it's going to work. you know It's going to be very nimble. It's going to be scrappy. It's going to be invest in a position and know your parameters, know what you need there to be successful and wait for the market to come to you.

12:22.44

James McWalter

Yeah, I think one of the things that ah folks are always trying to so strike this balance on is nearly like top down market analysis, a lot of analytics, you know, reading the community solar law coming to a state legislation, all those kind of things. um And to build like a very, very local ground game, right, which in some markets is like super necessary in other markets, you know, you can folks can be, ah you know,

12:48.13

James McWalter

kind of much more remote and and very mailer-based, et cetera, especially in markets that maybe haven't had, you know, a ton of penetration to date. But I think like one of the kind of fascinating things is like, again, you know, that community solar law, it's it's sort of the state house, but it's not through the state senate. You know, it's not quite at the governor's desk. Is that going to be under six months? That could be under 12 months. um And, you know, to kind of go back to like the hot state model, you know, some states were, you know, they get through the house. There's a lot of ah there's a lot of competition, I'm sure, for a little while.

13:17.34

James McWalter

then they it doesn't actually get to the governor's desks and it cools down a bit. um And I guess like, how do you kind of, you know, because I believe you guys are in some of those markets as well. How do you kind of like communicate with the landowner and the other stakeholders, right? Because, you know, what seemed like something might might have been kind of close to imminent, maybe now it's been delayed a few years and like managing those relationships.

13:37.62

Ty Baccile

Well, James, there's no one size fit all solution. um I think very often when we hit these crossroads, i whether it's during the interview process to determine if the lead qualifies, and it may, you know, mutually qualifies.

13:55.53

Ty Baccile

or if it's a year in or two years in. ah Usually the agreement is tailored to the individual. So you have some folks that are very transparent. I am looking for a near term but best case use of my property. you know I'm commercially minded. um i'm I'm looking at the competing interests over the next two years. And so you may have a financial or timely obligations that steer to that. And it's a very easy to understand that either that that's not a great place for us to take an opportunity or that opportunity has to have certain key characteristics in the market to move forward and those may not pan out ah versus you may have landowners that are very dedicated to their lands, the the farmers, um the the small family businesses and their their thought process is very particular that solar is the only thing they would do with it other than doing what they're doing now and they

14:50.87

Ty Baccile

they might be the third, fourth, fifth generation. So you know so but being transparent with them and saying, look. This is not an overnight success story. This is a long-term investment by our company, and here's the things we're doing now, and here's the things we continue to do, and we'll continue to be transparent with you on a quarterly or a biannual basis about where we're at in making the progress to making this work, and to maybe some of the alternative strategies that we are going to pursue if they they do not work. But it's the key. It's the transparency of that to them and to build that trust that

15:24.11

Ty Baccile

you know, they know the challenges you face. And in most cases, if if you approach it with the transparency and build the trust, they're not usually asking, they're not asking to end their lease or asking what they can do to help.

15:40.41

James McWalter

Yeah, I think I mentioned on the podcast previously, but you know, that come from a farming background. And so I'm like the last we've we've had had the farm in the family 120 years, I was the last eldest son not to farm, basically. And and you know, the long conversations I had with with with the rest of the family where, you know, I haven lived in in Ireland for for a like very long time now, and none of us wanted it to farm.

16:00.53

James McWalter

And then we sold the farm, right? But we talked a lot about it. Could we move it to some other use case? Could we you know do it? But in the end, um we we kind of made that call. But it was a very tough and and and long, chatted about decision to get to that point. um And you know these conversations are happening you know all across the country, especially in in rural communities where ah you know they they have their set of challenges with you know folks leaving, young folks, and all that kind of thing, and and seeing what is that kind of next chapter for that community in you know for the next generation, and and how does kind of things evolve. I guess like as you're kind of thinking through, you know, there's obviously a lot of challenges like development is not an easy ah have business to be in. It can be very rewarding. It's amazing getting steel to the point of steel and ground. um But I guess could you speak to some of the kind of challenges you see ah in the space and I guess like how those might be evolving as well.

16:50.15

Ty Baccile

Yeah, you know, this is my favorite question, right? The biggest challenges we face, and I'll always have big picture ideas in the back of my mind. I'm going to cover a couple of them here, but the first one I i do truly believe in is the biggest challenge we face is the one we don't know about yet.

17:16.30

Ty Baccile

something is going to emerge that's going to emerge on the local level, that's going to emerge on the interconnection level, that's going to emerge at the state level. what Which one is it going to be next year or the year after? and and i'm And I'm not talking federal policy. I think there's a lot of conversation about that. I'm talking about this one project over here. you know We think we have this perfect pathway forward economically. And if you look back to 2020,

17:43.02

Ty Baccile

um three, you know, you have a set of projects and national grid in New York sends you an email or gives you a call one day and say, by the way, our costs went up 40%. Right. And how many of those projects work. But not with a 40% increase, because maybe that was your profit margin.

18:06.05

Ty Baccile

or not even. Maybe your profit margin was 20%. And so it's it's these it's the variability of the opportunities themselves. um ah Another ah New York example is um the the concept of vested rights. So in New York, you have to go to the local HJ. So this is could be a small town of 100 or a large municipality of 100,000. You apply for a land use permit.

18:34.36

Ty Baccile

And you're going to invest in that, in most cases you're going to invest in that process financially to to have the key documents and visualizations and expert testimony necessary to establish that the project can be done um safely and can adhere to the requirements. And in most cases, and of course that's well celebrated, but what a lot of what what lot of folks may not know is that that is not a vested right in the project. That is a discretionary approval and you've received that approval and usually we use that approval to make a now go into non-refundable payments to the utility, purchase equipment, execute EPC agreements. That might take two years right from that point. um The vested rights clause in New York, the the current precedent on it is that you're not vested until you've made a, until you've, ah you have a building permit in your hands and you've made made substantial progress on construction on the ground.

19:32.93

Ty Baccile

So if you let's say, for example, ah you have a political cycle every two years locally, or ah you have a bad actor in that local government. at At that point, they could decide to revoke your land use permit.

19:50.50

Ty Baccile

ah you don't have your building permit yet, they because you're not vested, they can take that project away from you. And so you face that risk on every project in New York based on municipal law. um And so, yeah you know, being very cognizant of local changes, staying in communication with their AHJs is so important for us. um And then, you know, as we look at more of the state level,

20:17.82

Ty Baccile

and and we're making investments in the emerging markets, it is that lack of enabling legislation. um well this We're building an economic machine, right? We're we're hiring people, we're building local economy um on the construction level and on the development level. and you know And not our company, but all companies rely on what comes in next. and And after the federal election, we've really seen um A lot of conversation about that you know in the news about you know Republicans are for solar because of the economics, because of jobs. And and I think the biggest challenge we face is is to to not have to unwind this great machine that we're building because of um the lack of enabling legislation.

21:11.74

James McWalter

Yeah, I think it's it's super interesting. and one of the and I was at a conference in ah the deploy conference last week in DC, and there was folks from the incoming administration, folks from the outgoing administration on on yeah know the same panels kind of talking through things. And generally, um i you know I found a lot of the messaging pretty pretty honestly positive for the industry. um you know like energy security, ah you know meeting the the load, growth, demands of AI, winning the AI race, all those kind of things. Now, of course, it will come down to the specific legislation. If there is new bills or like adjustments, um I'm kind of quietly optimistic that we're going to see more incentives added for fossil rather than removal of incentives for ah for you know clean. That might be in things like the inflation reduction act. um But then also, you know

22:01.57

James McWalter

The industry is maturing pretty quickly. um And in many places, it is the cheapest form of energy. um you know Now there there are all these soft costs that you kind of touched on that like we have to kind of deal with, you know project success rates and so on, um you know ah hit the overall um you know return on investment And so all these things have to be considered but you know I feel costly optimistic on the industry, you know, navigating the next few years and even the potential of certain things being accelerated on the state level so you know one thing i I'm not sure if you follow things like the the recent Massachusetts law.

22:35.03

James McWalter

around permitting, um it was kind of like following some of the elements from the the New York law around like permitting for larger projects. And I think one of the, you know, we don't forget the details of that particular law, but I think one of the things that I'm thinking a lot about is how much transparency and clarity does the developer actually want? Because so much of the value of that kind of down in the weeds ground game is finding the little niche ways of like navigating relationships and all those kind of things to get a project done.

23:01.83

James McWalter

Whereas if you had, you know, the most streamlined system in the world, really, it's just dollars in development out, right? And you become much more, it becomes much more less bespoke.

23:08.20

Ty Baccile

Yes.

23:11.81

James McWalter

So I guess, how do you think about those things, you know, when, like, because a lot of people are like, Oh, we want more, like, like state level legislation to help these kind of things. um And sometimes I'm a little bit like, be careful what you wish for, depending on the development strategy you might have.

23:25.02

Ty Baccile

Yeah, you know i ah I was in an ah interconnection policy working group meeting for for New York the other day. And we were discussing, you know we're asking the utilities to um manage queue congestion and ah move faster. And in response, careful what you ask for. They're saying, well, great. Then move your projects faster. And so we are having an honest discussion about this. and you know you know I reminded my peers, I said, this is a competitive business. Not every developer is made equally. Not every project is made equally. And the reason that ah community solar exists is it's a competitive model.

24:14.62

Ty Baccile

And when where there is competition competition is innovation. um If we completely streamline everything we do and re we remove barriers, we will not we won't evolve. We will not see as great a project, and we will not continue to build and evolve great companies. The second point to it is that um home rule does matter.

24:40.68

Ty Baccile

local rights are important. And although that our mission and is legitimate, and our mission is for a greater good, whether that's the economy, whether that's the environment, um whether that's electricity prices, precedent of overruling local authority um can can create a, that precedent can create a a spiral over the course of 100 years.

25:10.59

Ty Baccile

We don't want to be the industry that removes the rights of the local government or the county government um because court presses at that doesn't necessarily look at is your industry doing this for the right reasons. If they give our industry the right to bypass the local government.

25:31.61

Ty Baccile

does does that open the door for fossils to do it for um um industry that may create a lot of pollution to do it? You know, we want to respect the rights of our local people and our local governments and and we and we want to give them the opportunity to innovate and grow as well.

25:55.18

James McWalter

Yeah, I think the and actually i was at that same conference, ah yeah we were asked like some controversial views and so on. I think you know ah folks are often saying, let's add additional stakeholders. right So let's say you already have a preexisting set of stakeholders at the local level. um And it's like, oh, let's have more stakeholder engagement, ever more stakeholder engagement. but But every time you add a stakeholder, you you reduce the decision-making likelihood, and you definitely extend the decision-making timeline.

26:19.63

James McWalter

and And I think one of the interesting things about the Massachusetts law is they created three new offices right to navigate permitting as a way of streamlining things.

26:20.34

Ty Baccile

Yes.

26:28.64

James McWalter

And it's like just communicating between three new offices, even if every one of those offices is like you know doing the most efficient job possible, which we hope they are. um You just now have three different entities now to deal with.

26:39.41

James McWalter

and you know i think the ah you know the the the the cross pressures of ah wanting to engage communities, which I think makes you know total sense, especially you know the historical facts on the ground um for communities across the United States. um But you know those things kind to intersect in these kind of interesting ways. I actually you had a somebody who's on the planning board of ah of an HJ in Pennsylvania, and they were like, we're fine with half percent of our HJ being solar.

27:08.58

James McWalter

um But like we don't know what a half percent should be zoned like that, because we know that these developers come in and they need it near certain power lines. But we don't really have an idea what the power lines are. So it's just like this big disconnect.

27:19.04

James McWalter

It's like, you know if you could the if you could say to the HJ, hey, we're just going to take a bit of this land, um and it's going to be equally spread across you know all the HJs across the entire state. And we're going to help you understand that, hey, upzoning by these power lines that have capacity is the only place you'd have to do it.

27:34.48

James McWalter

And the rest is not going to be touched.

27:34.63

Ty Baccile

you

27:36.15

James McWalter

I think that would like be very, very powerful from the folks I've talked to. Because folks are like, oh, they're going to pour in. you know The developers are going to pour in. And there is going to be ever more developers. No, no, no. Once the capacity of the network is gone, like like you know the development is probably tapped out for that community.

27:48.29

James McWalter

But I think there's just like a misunderstanding happening up and down the chain um around these kind of problems.

27:53.56

Ty Baccile

Yeah, you can look a couple of different ways on this. A great example of it going well for the most part is if you look to Virginia.

28:03.78

Ty Baccile

So Virginia local authorities at the county level. So we're at the county level. You can have a certified planner. You can have a development administrator and a code enforcement officer.

28:18.36

Ty Baccile

And so you can look at landmass at a much larger macro view. and develop policies of growth versus if your town is two square miles. And in the 20 square mile area, there's five HJs.

28:35.28

Ty Baccile

how you're able to really develop land use policies that are consistent and consider the big picture if you don't have a big picture view. so um And then the second point about Virginia is you know their approach has been on percentage cap. And the percentage cap isn't even necessarily about farmland or about fear. It's about future opportunity.

28:57.54

Ty Baccile

you know, so other industry in 20 years can come in and develop or so suburban opportunities or farming opportunities, because what they they're they're more concerned with is, you know, creating a desert, right, a desert of solar. And they're saying, hey, look, we're going to give you 3% of our total acreage.

29:14.18

Ty Baccile

And that's not the end point. That's the check-in point. and And the incentive model in New York does the same thing. They're saying, we're going to give you 200 megawatts. 200 megawatts isn't the end point. It's the check-in point to make sure that everything is going well. And and I think that you know in a New Yorker, Pennsylvania, where we get a lot of fear of the takeover of the land, you know it is a different characteristic that um flat land is surrounded by rivers and mountains and suburban sprawl and so there really is these just small chunks of land left that there's you know that might it's going to be a lot harder to to say how how do we you know

30:00.32

Ty Baccile

limits when there's only just a few places to go in this town. um But if if we if we started to look at the model as more of a let's develop local processes that just have check-in points or bumpers and then let them keep going or let's give those local HJs more resources um instead of giving them to a state office, ah you know we're gonna be better served. and And my last example of that is You know, average town in upstate New York has a code officer. They work in seven or eight different towns and they have a full-time job. And they have 30 developers calling to do pre-app meetings, right? How are they supposed to be vested? You know, ah when it's a part-time job versus in Virginia, you have a certified planner who works full-time and their KPIs are based on getting applications complete.

30:53.34

James McWalter

Yeah, and and you know not not the highest paid job, pretty thankless, getting all these kind of cross pressures. um I guess returning to New York then, you joined the board of Nicaea last year. What has that experience been like?

31:09.00

Ty Baccile

It's been great, honestly, so Nicaea board is a collective group of um stakeholders in our industry. So we have folks from the construction side, from the development of community solar to the development of rooftops in Long Island and New York City. And um it's led by a Nicaea internal team. A lot of people know Noah, Andrew, drew and John. um And they work full time there. And there are three people with with some support that do big things.

31:46.24

Ty Baccile

And although that might be a thankless job, they wake up every day and they do it with pride and with a culture to champion our industry and drive it forward. And it's um it's probably been the best experience of my career just to see how hard they're working to support our industry, but with the best interests of the state in mind and being objective to listening to the stakeholders of the state government, to the utilities and to us to help carve out and create solutions. And in the same sense, getting to sit on that board with other great company leaders um and hear their stories of their challenges, their successes and their opportunities and

32:37.60

Ty Baccile

to collaborate together to to create a vision for the future of our state. um you know Our state has a lot of promise. And I think we often say, instead of looking for a solution for to the state agency, instead of looking for a solution to the legislator, let's let our industry innovate the solution. let's Let's put our great people in the room and help them and help carve out what to do next.

33:05.50

James McWalter

Absolutely. I encourage everyone to go to the Nicaea board of directors website and you're going to see, you know, great folks coming from many, many um fantastic organizations and companies.

33:17.25

James McWalter

um You mentioned, you know, you're, you're upstate with the family, all those kinds of things.

33:17.46

Ty Baccile

yeah And I'll make a plug though.

33:23.28

Ty Baccile

Yeah, so don't right so ah so Nicaea is um able to function on two pillars.

33:24.04

James McWalter

Please. Please.

33:34.10

Ty Baccile

One is join Nicaea. The membership but and the cost to join is scaled based on the size of your company. So if you're a small company, um you you're going to pay a very small reasonable rate.

33:46.31

Ty Baccile

you know Come join us. um And then once you join us, don't just get the emails and listen to the calls. um Ask how you can help. Join the working groups. In order for us to actually solve the problems being identified, we have to build case studies. We have to use analytical data. And often I've used a lot of GIS data. We we use paces and and we use interconnection queue data. But we also need ah at scale Here is where the problems occurred with utility on these projects and these dates. And so, you know, we need our membership to come out, join us, you know, hand in hand to help us solve these problems.

34:33.15

James McWalter

Pace is a very proud member of my team. It's actually the first industry group we joined when we we started the company a couple of years ago. um And ah yeah, and actually, as you're saying there, like we we should you know I think we're part of one working group, but we should be, I think, more invested in general. um Because you we also see and and hear from a lot of different developers and feel that you know we could ah probably do a better job of like expressing some of the kind of combined you know thoughts that about ah people have.

34:59.54

James McWalter

um Right before we've got to finish off a tie, you know, you mentioned, you know, you have this wonderful family, you're from upstate New York near the Finger Lakes area. I'm a kind of big believer that, you know, those kind of foundational years, you know, have a big effect on how folks like approach problems. You know, how does growing up in upstate New York shape what you've done?

35:19.62

Ty Baccile

You know, I've told this story before, but um I am the great grandson of um ah a ditch digger. So so ah my great grandfather immigrated, came to upstate New York because they were digging the canals, that economic opportunity. And I think about that a lot with solar folks coming here to build solar projects, coming here looking for that opportunity. But if if I look at my,

35:46.24

Ty Baccile

upbringing in upstate New York. Growing up in horse heads, we are truly an energy community. you know We were um at the face of the the boom of of of the fossil fuel industry and fracking. And in 2010, we had 100 companies based here, all surveyors, attorneys, abstractors,

36:06.67

Ty Baccile

um you know corporations all supporting that gas industry. And then one day that the state decided to ban it. and and And this isn't a plug about what is right or wrong about that. this is this is the The story I'm telling is watching state policy overnight erode our economy um and and watching and that instability unfolded at the same time as I was coming into industry.

36:31.91

Ty Baccile

um It's really shaped how I approach waking up every day in this industry and in my pathway to my job today, which is you have to do this with an entrepreneurial spirit. You have to you have you have to treat every project as if um you will find a way forward to make it successful in every project. um Every relationship relationship you build matters because you don't know where that's going to lead you in the future. And you just have to you have to be be very conscious of of the opportunities presented in front of you and the people around you. um Embrace your challenges, establish possibility, and persevere.

37:15.93

James McWalter

Couldn't echo those words strongly enough. Really enjoyed the cover conversation, Tai. Is there anything I should have asked you about, but did not?

37:23.57

Ty Baccile

Yeah, James and and and thank you. Thank you to Paces for putting on this podcast but you forgot to ask me about any opportunities here at New Energy Equity. um you know

37:33.98

James McWalter

Absolutely. Are there any any roles or anything ah you guys are looking for for folks for?

37:39.21

Ty Baccile

Yeah, so, um you know, just by a short way of background, you know, near-inject equity, we we're a nationwide community solar developer. We're based in Horsets, New York, Annapolis, Maryland, which is a Baltimore suburb, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and in Boulder, Colorado. And, ah you know, we cover all aspects of community solar and CNI rooftop development.

38:03.03

Ty Baccile

um origination, acquisitions, operations, and maintenance. And so we are looking for great folks on the GIS, land, O&M, technicians, finance, um as our business model grows nationwide, um we we need more folks nationwide to join us. um Our culture is big on being together, working in person, um and we have opportunities all across the industry right now. Our our website is newenergyequity dot.com, um and from there you can go to our careers page and look at our current opportunities.

38:39.92

James McWalter

And we'll include those links in the show notes. And having worked with Tai and the team for over a year now, I cannot say how impressed we've been with the quality of the folks there. And you know people could do ah couldn't do better than than to join the team. Thank you so much, Tai. Have a great rest of your day.

38:54.44

Ty Baccile

Thanks, James.