Worlds first solar highway opens in France (solar panels in the pavement)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/world-s-first-solar-highway-opens-in-france-a7491046.html

[font face=Serif][font size=5]World’s first solar highway opens in France[/font]

[font size=4]The 1km road cost about €5 million to build[/font]

Safya Khan-Ruf



[font size=3]France has unveiled the world's first solar panel road in a small village in Normandy.

The road, called Wattway, was inaugurated by ecology minister Ségolène Royal, who said earlier this year that she wanted to build 1000 km of solar panel roads in France.

Colas, part of the telecoms giant Bougyes, developed the Wattway panels over five years.


[font size=1](Getty)[/font]

The route - financed by the state - is covered with 2,800 sq m of electricity-generating panels and crosses the village of Tourouvre-au-Perche. The electricity generated should be able to power the street lighting in the village of 3,400 inhabitants.

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[dumbcat]

1. This will be really interesting to watch

over the next few years. Here is a chance to get some real world data as to the durability and maintenance issues inherent to this concept. If this works out economically it could be a big game changer. I hope it is a big success and we see a lot of development of this concept.

[NNadir]

3. In the next few years, we will surge well beyond 410 ppm. n/t

[dumbcat]

4. Which has what to do with the solar roadway

development? I am missing your point.

[NNadir]

5. Well, it's some evidence that all this enthusiasm for trivial and unworkable junk like solar...

...roadways is meaningless and useless, not worth the gas burned to run computers to tell us how great it is.

We spent a trillion bucks on solar energy in the last decade with the result that the acceleration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is accelerating, not decelerating.

I personally couldn't think of a worse place to put this stuff which will be even more useless with grease and other road dirt all over it.

The point is this: There is some kind of fantasy that's been rolling around for one half a century that solar PV energy is clean and workable and meaningful. It hasn't been. It isn't. It won't be.

And this, this misplaced faith, is a big part of the reason that carbon dioxide concentrations are climbing at more than 3.00 ppm a year as of 2015.

[NNadir]

2. I'm sure it will dissolve grease, take out the laundry, do the dishes, pick up dinner, make the...

beds, put the kids to bed, vacuum the rugs, and deliver the reincarnation of Fourier, Galois, and Lagrange.

It will, like the rest of the solar fantasy, however, do zero to address climate change, and in fact, will make climate change even worse by generating more complacency and wishful thinking than energy.

It's garbage, as useless as "Make America Great Again," a big lie people tell themselves because their brains are too inflexible to grasp reality.

We tell ourselves the same lies over and over again, until we almost believe them, and sometimes, in fact, do believe them.

Yesterday, after 50 years of similar "yesterdays" with delusional fingers in the dykes, "million solar roofs," "desert solar thermal plants, wind turbines, and now a kilometer of solar panels that will soon be covered with tire wear and other road debris, we hit 404.79 ppm of carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa.

If shit like this were going to be useful - it hasn't; it isn't and it won't - it would have done something a trillion dollars ago. Again. It didn't; it isn't and it won't.

I suppose cheering for stuff like this is immediately more satisfying than actually doing something, since actually doing something is difficult and hard work, and thus inconsistent with our culture of immediate gratification.

The Republicans aren't the only loonies in America, and as this is in France, in the world either.

Happy holidays.