State College Area School District on Monday became the first of 10 Centre County governmental entities to authorize the termination of a long-planned solar power purchase project after the developer said the terms of the contract were no longer viable due to federal policy changes.
The school board voted unanimously to approve the termination agreement three days after it was brought forward during a meeting of the Centre County Solar Group formed last year to manage the project.
The governing bodies of the other nine members — State College Borough, College, Ferguson, Harris and Patton Townships, the State College Borough Water Authority, College Township Water Authority, Centre County Government and the Centre Region Council of Governments — are expected to approve the termination by the end of March.
As part of the termination agreement, developer Prospect 14 has volunteered to pay $135,000 that will be disbursed among the CCSG entities. According to information included in Monday’s school board agenda, legal costs for the CCSG members totaled just under $268,000, resulting in a net total of $133,000 after the termination is executed.
CCSG members also paid $136,176 to consultant GreenSky Development Group, including $69,676 paid by a working group during the creation of the power purchase agreement and $66,500 for consulting services during 2025, according to the agenda. GreenSky’s Gregg Shively said at Friday’s CCSG meeting that his company will forego its final payment for consulting services.
Fees were paid proportionally by each member based on the volume of energy they planned to receive through the agreement.
Designed for the member entities to achieve electricity cost savings and meet environmental goals, the Solar Power Purchase Agreement would have been a 15-year deal to purchase renewable energy from an array to be constructed by Prospect 14 in Clarion County. SCASD was to be the largest energy consumer among the participants, acquiring 80% of its electricity from the project with a projected cost savings of $2.8 million over the 15-year period.
The concept was introduced in 2018 and a working group began developing the project in 2020. Contracts were signed last summer, but in the fall, Prospect 14 told the solar group that it would need to amend the terms of the agreement due to changes at the federal level, including the demise of tax credits for solar projects in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” signed into law in 2025, increased tariffs and Trump administration executive orders that made solar development more costly.
Prospect 14 asked to increase the base rate from $0.04459 per kilowatt-hour to $0.05755 and the annual escalator from 1.5% to 2.5%. With that, the solar group members’ savings would have evaporated and instead cost a collective $650,000 over the 15-year term.
Contract language allowed Prospect 14 to renegotiate if economic conditions made financing difficult, or to simply walk away from the project. Randy Brown, solar group coordinator and SCASD business and finance officer, said at the Friday CCSG meeting that the participants “made efforts in good faith to work toward a solution” but determined the project could not move forward.
Brendan Neagle, of Prospect 14, who said many solar projects have been impacted by federal changes in the last year, expressed regrets that the SPPA would not come to fruition.
“It is not the result that we wanted to have with this power purchase agreement either,” Neagle said. “We worked very hard over the last many years to try to make this a reality.”
The project has been met with pushback over the last two years by some elected officials and others who said there was a lack of transparency (and alleged possible illegality) in how excess legal fees beyond those originally approved by the members were paid, and criticized the delays and overall project management.
At Friday’s CCSG meeting, several of those critics said they believed the project was ill-fated before the second Trump administration began, citing development costs, management and practicality. Those critics included former State College Borough Councilman Josh Portney and current Millheim Borough Councilman Robert Zeigler, both Democrats, Republican Halfmoon Township Supervisor Ron Servello and Centre County GOP Chair Michelle Schellberg.
“When our vendors start to overspend more than the budgets that they set there needs to start be red flags, and those red flags cannot be ignored,” Portney said. “I really hope that there’s some accountability here. And I appreciate all of your work. I know this is a hard-working team, but I really have been hoping for answers here, not just simple affirmations.”
Added Servello, who has previously written to state Attorney General Dave Sunday asking that his office look into the legal fee issue, “For the life of me, I can’t understand how this could have gotten to this point without there being questions along the way and very careful consideration of what was being done. I think the end goal was put ahead of anything else, including practicality. And I think we, the taxpayers of this Centre Region are going to pay.”
At Monday’s school board meeting, member Jesse Barlow, who was on State College Borough Council when the project was introduced, said he supported the signing of the SPPA and believes the local government bodies, and the nation in general, need to continue working toward greater use of solar energy.
“The agreement fell apart because of policies of the current president and Congress,” Barlow said. “Many solar projects were derailed by these policies, although some have managed to soldier on… Solar energy is the fastest growing form of energy in history. That is because energy based on setting stuff on fire is becoming less and less competitive. Most of that growth is in other countries. The United States stands alone in trying to inhibit it. It’s as if, in the early electronic age, we discouraged the use of transistors in favor of vacuum tubes.”
School board member Amy Bader also took issue with the idea that the project was doomed before 2025, saying that despite delays caused by COVID and volatility in the energy market, the participants and their elected officials, who changed over time, had reason to believe it would be successful.
“Indications were favorable for this agreement to create significant cost savings for the participating organizations and their taxpayers until significant additional volatility was created in the past year by major changes in federal support for renewable energy,” Bader said. “To be clear, the significant barriers that made the project nonviable arose very recently.
“And this is supported by the fact that 10 municipalities, many of whom generally have anywhere from five to seven governing members, which over the course of time frequently change, all continued to commit to make the decision to stay the course on this endeavor. Many elected officials, who I sincerely believe enter this work for the genuine intent to benefit their constituents and their communities, evaluated the information and situation at each step along the way, and believed this endeavor had the potential to be successful. It’s unfortunate that that opportunity was taken away.”
The SPPA agreement also included a five-year contract with Direct Energy/NRG as the retailer for distribution from the project and energy not covered by the purchase agreement. While the servicing agreement with Direct Energy/NRG will also terminate with the SPPA, participants will have the option of continuing or terminating agreements for the company to provide retail electricity.
Shively said that contract is a good deal for the members to fix electricity costs and recommended that they continue with it.
SCASD administration will prepare a recommendation for the school board to consider at a later date for energy broker services and electricity purchasing, according to the agenda.
Whether and how the SPPA members will continue to collaborate on joint solar projects remains to be determined. Brown said on Friday that whether they work together or on their own each participant remains committed to the cause of utilizing solar energy.
On Monday, Barlow said he hopes to see SCASD return to undertaking a larger-scale solar project sooner rather than later.
“A couple of decades ago, we had a SCASD proposal for a much needed high school renovation, and that fell on its face. But we returned to it and we built an even better high school,” Barlow said. “We can do something like that with this project, only I hope we do it more quickly — maybe not in the same way and maybe by ourselves. We’ve already done five on-site solar projects, not including the Solar for Schools project at the new Park Forest Middle School. And in the end, like with a new high school, we’ll serve the district and community better by returning to a large-scale solar project, perhaps on our own terms to meet our energy needs and our community needs.”
