It’s an environmental struggle that neither side wanted: Solar advocates are turning against conservationists.
On one hand, fans of solar power are pushing for a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, with large-scale solar projects across the United States. Conservationists and people living near solar projects, on the other hand, are watching in horror as lush fields are littered with rows of silicon solar panels, damaging ecologically sensitive areas.
“It’s funny to me that there’s environmental resistance to wind and solar, which are an environmental solution,” said Michael Weber, a professor of energy resources at the University of Texas at Austin.
But, he said, this is not entirely unexpected as solar has gone from an emerging technology to a technology that is now more mainstream.
“Whenever you do anything on a large scale, you start getting resistance,” Weber said. “There’s resistance to oil and gas, and nuclear and shopping centers. It’s a sign of maturity in solar that when people want to scale, you get resistance.”
The battles have played out state by state and county by county, forcing communities to consider how much they are willing to sacrifice to decarbonize the economy.
They have also begun looking for new places to put millions more solar panels, sometimes in unexpected places and with the help of unlikely collaborators. Researchers, environmentalists and energy companies are increasingly turning to places such as agricultural canals, grazing pastures, terraces and parking lots of large retail stores, land next to interstate highways and airports, and tops of landfills, mines and wastewater. Is doing. treatment plant.
If large open spaces aren’t right for utility-scale solar farms, the thinking goes, then panels will have to be squeezed everywhere.
“We need to look at every already developed land: every roof, every parking lot and here in California, a 4,000-mile open canal,” said Jordan Harris, CEO of Solar AquaGrid. The startup is in the process of installing solar-panel canopies over water supply canals in California’s Central Valley – a project that will have the added benefit of reducing evaporation of less water. this is $20 million in state funding.
solar panel equipment price fall In recent decades made more solar competitive with fossil fuels, Solar panels are now a common sight on homes, businesses and some government infrastructure.
But analysts still expect most solar power generation in the near future. utility-scale projectsBecause of the savings that come with large scale installations.
It is these projects that are facing pushback. local governments in states such as california, Indiana, I, New York And Virginia The U.S. has largely banned solar farms, as a national push for clean energy has been fueled by complaints about how the projects affect wildlife and landscapes. In a Nevada city west of Las Vegas, Residents are trying to block The proposed 2,300-acre solar field.
According to local news reports, NBC News counted 57 cities, towns and counties nationwide where residents have proposed a solar moratorium beginning in 2021, and not every proposed ban gets local news coverage. At least 40 of them approved the measures. Other localities had done so in earlier years.
This resistance threatens the larger ambitions of the solar energy movement. An analysis of the US solar market published in December by research firm Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group named “Sit Restriction” As one of the constraints on growth along with supply chain limitations and other factors.
At the same time, there is a growing urgency to cut down on fossil fuels. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last month warned about global warming was already in danger food and water resources, while the Russia-Ukraine conflict has given rise to more Call For American Energy Freedom,
This has left all solar advocates to seek nontraditional allies.
Last year, Environment America, an advocacy group, launched a campaign to ask Walmart, the largest U.S. retailer, to commit to installing solar power systems on nearly all of its rooftops and parking lots by 2035. As of November, more than 150 other environmental organizations was signed to push. One study found that installing solar umbrellas in parking lots at Walmart “supercenters” will generate enough electricity For 346,000 charging stations for electric vehicles.
“There’s only so much land on this planet, and right now those roofs are doing nothing but keeping the sun out and the rain out,” said Johanna Neumann, senior director of the Renewable Energy Campaign at Environment America, an advocacy group.
“By giving them the dual function of being a solar plant, we can give them real value.”
And, she said, the roofs of big box stores and warehouses let the solar sector kick off the battle over their environmental impact.
“You don’t run into the problem of pitting clean-energy advocates against conservationists,” Newman said.
solar is already gaining momentum Among corporations seeking to reduce their emissions. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, Walmart ranks third in U.S. businesses in solar capacity after Apple and Amazon and ahead of Target. And by 2019, 15 times more solar capacity was installed by U.S. businesses, including warehouses and big-box stores, than a decade ago, the group said. said in a report,
Walmart has not agreed to environmental groups’ full request, but it told NBC News that it has more than 550 renewable energy projects, including solar and wind, implemented or under development. Several have recently opened in California, including parking umbrellas, The company aims to use 100% renewable energy by 2035, which is now 36 percent higher than its estimate.
“Our choices of solar versus wind and onsite versus offsite for any given project depend on a wide range of factors, including cost and resource availability,” Walmart said in a statement.
Smaller solar sites do not have the same economies of scale as utility-sized sites, but experts said they do have other benefits, including revenue from selling electricity, local self-sufficiency, low transmission costs and the use of local storage with increasingly affordable Opportunity is included. battery technology.
“The best place to put solar power is to directly integrate it into whatever you’re powering,” said Joshua Pierce, an engineering professor at Western University in Ontario, Canada. reservoirsin parking lots and other places.
“Right now, the grid is all centralized, and I think it’s going to move towards the union of the different solar communities,” he said.
Biden administration has said That solar power could account for nearly half of America’s electricity by 2050. Solar and wind power are broadly Popular in surveys.
An entire corner of the solar industry has developed to help identify unseen places to install panels. Aurora Solar, a tech startup based in San Francisco, sells software to installation companies, allowing them to find potential clients and design systems.
The software pulls data on the weather and available sunlight at a given location and combines it with data from aerial imagery and lidar laser technology about the size and dimensions of individual buildings – all driving wide-scale solar adoption. to encourage.
This is work that was done individually, one building at a time.
“I’ve actually met people who fell off a roof while doing this,” said Christopher Hopper, who co-founded the company with Sam Adamo, a business school classmate. The old way, he said, “is not scalable. It takes a lot of man-hours to design, and it’s not very accurate either.”
Google runs a consumer-facing website, Project Sunroofto tell people from 2015 how much solar energy They can make it to a given US address.
There is also a push to plant solar farms in places that are off the beaten path, or at least away from natural scenery.
Houston has chosen the 240-acre site a former landfill The installation of what the city said will be the largest infill solar project in the country. In a neighborhood called Sunnyside, the project will generate enough electricity for 5,000 homes, according to the city. Similar projects have been built pit filling everywhere new jersey,
is an energy firm building A solar project on a former coal mine on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia, while in New York State, Cornell University researchers test Installing solar panels in a field where sheep graze.
A northern California city says it has the largest floating solar farm in the US wastewater treatment plantand in January, a China-based energy company said It formed the world’s largest floating solar cluster on a reservoir there.
And last year, the Biden administration encouraged the development of solar projects on the highwaywith Information Asking the Federal Highway Administration to ask field offices to work with states on ideas. Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, including Weber, have said that most states have over 200 miles Interstate facades suitable for solar development, especially near exits and resting places.
Creative spaces have a particular advantage: fewer potential neighbors who may complain.
“To solve problems, we have to do stuff, and sometimes people don’t want to do stuff. It’s annoying,” said Weber. “We have to decide as a nation whether we invest in the future.” going to do it or not.”