NYSERDA 2026 Soils Data for use in the Large-Scale Renewables and NY-Sun Programs

THE NYSERDA 2026 SOILS DATA IS TO BE USED FOR NYSERDA’S RENEWABLE ENERGY STANDARD (RES) REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) ISSUED AFTER THE PUBLICATION OF THIS DATA OR THE NY-SUN PROGRAM AND IS NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ACTUAL IN SITU SOIL CONDITIONS OR AGRICULTURAL STATUS. 

In order to facilitate the protection of agricultural lands, developers participating in RESRFPs or the NY-Sun program may be responsible for making an agricultural mitigation payment to a designated fund based on the extent to which the solar project’s facility area overlaps with an Agricultural District and New York’s highly productive agricultural soils, identified as Mineral Soil Groups (MSG) classifications 1 through 4 (MSG 1-4). This mitigation approach is designed to discourage solar projects from siting on MSG 1-4.  Furthermore, this mitigation approach is designed to encourage retaining agricultural productivity on the project site.  Instances where Proposers cannot avoid or minimize impacts on MSG 1-4 will result in a payment to a fund administered by NYSERDA. Disbursement of collected agricultural mitigation payment funds will be informed by consultation with the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (AGM) to support ongoing regional agricultural practices and/or soil conservation initiatives.

Similarly, developers participating in RESRFPs need to submit a Solar Scorecard and characterize the extent to which their project avoids and minimizes impacts to active agricultural lands, regardless of whether they are in an Agricultural District, and particularly those with highly productive agricultural soils. 

This dataset contains a combination of soils data from multiple sources to serve participants of NYSERDA’s Large-Scale Renewable and NY-Sun programs. The NYSERDA 2026 Soils Data was created by converting the 2026 New York State Agricultural Land Classification master list of soils maintained by AGM to a tabular form and providing a corresponding unique identifier for each listed soil that enables the user to link the soils to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) SSURGO soils database, allowing for a geographical representation.  When the NYSERDA 2026 Soils Data is joined with spatial data from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) SSURGO soils database, the corresponding soil unit can be mapped in a geographic information system software.  These data are displayed in the web map. The latest version of the SSURGO database should be used to get the most accurate join.  Data is updated yearly from both NRCS and from AGM, however, NYSERDA will not update this dataset and it will remain intact for future reference. NYSERDA intends on creating new soils datasets for future procurements on an annual basis.
For the Solar Scorecard Agricultural Avoidance Categories, also displayed in the web map and available as a downloadable zip file, identify MSG 1-4 lands that have potentially been in active agricultural production in the past 5 years, those that have not been but are grasslands or shrub/scrub and not yet succeeded to forest or converted to developed land, and those lands outside of MSG 1-4 that are potentially in active agricultural production. Lands were classified as potentially in active agricultural production in the last five years if they met any of the following criteria: Pasture/Hay or Crop in either the 2024, 2023 or 2021 United States Geological Survey National Land Cover Datasets (NLCD); any agricultural category, including fallow land but excluding aquaculture, in the United States Department of Agriculture’s Cropland Data Layers (CDL) 2021-2025.   These data, along with lands classified as Grassland or Shrub/Scrub in the NLCD 2024, dataset were then intersected with the NYSERDA 2026 Soils Data to identify the Active Agriculture MSG 1-4, Active Agriculture Not MSG 1-4, and Inactive Ag Grass/Shrub MSG1-4 categories. with the NYSERDA 2026 Soils Data for use in the Large-Scale Renewables and NY-Sun Program