December 2025 Blog | onCORE Origination
By Joseph Tassone Jr.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”- Henry Ford
In renewables, a lot of what we do lives inside a neat box. Boxes are comfortable. Boxes are familiar.
Look at a typical solar array from 30,000 feet: it’s a clean rectangle. Inverter pads? Solar panels? Squares and rectangles. Even the land itself reinforces it. Fly west of the Mississippi, and you’ll see mile after mile of parcel lines laid out in a grid: big square patches and long rectangles, a world that feels measurable and orderly. But questioning these patterns can reveal new opportunities for innovation.
Boxes also have a hidden downside: they make it tempting to stop thinking.
People are busy. Reviewing agencies are overloaded. Developers are juggling schedules, budgets, and stakeholders. When something doesn’t fit the standard template, it’s often easier to say “no” than to spend hours redesigning, reworking assumptions, and walking a new path through the process. “It won’t work” becomes a shortcut. A reflex. A way to reduce risk and time, at least in the moment.
After more than 30 years and thousands of projects, I’ve learned this: not everything conveniently fits into the box. And the people willing to think outside it are often the difference between an average project and a great one, or between a dead project and one that gets resurrected and turns into gold.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard: “It won’t work.”
Engineers say it. Consultants say it. Attorneys say it. Investors say it. Sometimes they’re right and when the risk is real, and the math doesn’t pencil, you listen. But “it won’t work” isn’t the end of the conversation. It’s the start of the most important question in development: Why?
Is it a technical limitation or an assumption? A hard constraint or a preference? Is the barrier physical, legal, interconnection-related, schedule-driven, or “this isn’t how we usually do it”? Is there actual precedent that blocks it, or just precedent that makes people comfortable?
History is full of reminders that “never” is a dangerous word. The English Channel Tunnel was debated, proposed, dismissed, and delayed for generations because it was too complex, too risky, too politically complicated, until it finally opened in 1994. And the Sydney Opera House nearly collapsed under the weight of “we can’t build those shells” until engineers found a breakthrough by deriving the roof geometry from a sphere.
Out-of-the-box thinking doesn’t mean being reckless. It means being relentless about clarity. It means doing the work most people avoid: defining the real constraints, challenging the assumed ones, and finding the option that isn’t visible when everyone’s staring at the rectangle.
Some of the best wins in renewables come from that mindset: a creative site layout that preserves setbacks without sacrificing production, a smarter access plan that turns a “fatal flaw” into a permitting non-issue or a title/real-estate solution that keeps a project alive when the easy answer was to walk away.
In a business that loves straight lines, the advantage often goes to those willing to redraw them.
Joe Tassone Jr. is the founder and a principal of onCORE Origination with 30 years of project development experience and an expert in renewable energy development. Visit www.oncoreorig.com for more information.