Originally published in the Boston Business Journal on December 6, 2012.

Orlando Pacheco is a rarity in the Bay State's budding green-energy sector, having managed to navigate a phalanx of local zoning laws and traditional NIMBYism to establish the first municipal-owned solar farm in the central region of the state.

Such efforts earn praise form state officials and clean-energy proponents, who point out that the commonwealth is well on its way to achieving its goal of getting 250 megawatts of solar power installations by 2017. For Pacheco, the town administrator for Lancaster, Mass., the installation offers a mix a bragging rights and responsible governing that should result in 610,000 kilowatts of energy annually, once the town's solar farm is connected to the grid.