County by county, solar panels face pushback

[Jilly_in_VA]

It’s an environmental clash that neither side wanted: Solar advocates are squaring off against conservationists.

On one side, fans of solar energy are pushing a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, with massive solar projects popping up across the United States. On the other, conservationists and people who live near the solar projects are watching in horror as green fields are filled with rows of silicon solar panels, damaging ecologically sensitive areas.

“It’s kind of funny to me that there’s environmental resistance to wind and solar, which is an environmental solution,” said Michael Webber, a professor of energy resources at the University of Texas at Austin.

But, he added, it’s not entirely unexpected as solar has gone from an emerging technology to one that’s now more mainstream.

“Any time you do anything at scale, you start to get resistance,” Webber 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 just how much they are willing to sacrifice to decarbonize the economy.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/county-county-solar-panels-face-pushback-rcna16233
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Damn NIMBYs

[CrispyQ]

1. This is just down the road from me.

This Colorado 'solar garden' is literally a farm under solar panels
November 14, 20215:00 AM ET

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/14/1054942590/solar-energy-colorado-garden-farm-land



snip...

When Byron Kominek returned home after the Peace Corps and later working as a diplomat in Africa, his family's 24-acre farm near Boulder, Colo., was struggling to turn a profit.

"Our farm has mainly been hay producing for fifty years," Kominek said, on a recent chilly morning, the sun illuminating a dusting of snow on the foothills to his West. "This is a big change on one of our three pastures."

That big change is certainly an eye opener: 3,200 solar panels mounted on posts eight feet high above what used to be an alfalfa field on this patch of rolling farmland at the doorstep of the Rocky Mountains.

Getting to this point, a community solar garden that sells 1.2 megawatts of power back into the local grid, wasn't easy, even in a progressive county like his that wanted to expand renewable energy. When Kominek approached Boulder County regulators about putting up solar panels, they initially told him no, his land was designated as historic farmland.

~more at link

[progree]

3. ... the shade from the towering panels above the soil actually helped the plants thrive...

But he soon discovered that the shade from the towering panels above the soil actually helped the plants thrive. That intermittent shade also meant a lot less evaporation of coveted irrigation water. And in turn the evaporation actually helped keep the sun-baked solar panels cooler, making them more efficient.

....

Walking the intricately lined rows of veggies beneath the panels, he beams pointing out where the peppers, tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, lettuces, beets, turnips, carrots were all recently harvested. The farm is still bursting with chard and kale even in November.

[MuseRider]

6. That is awesome!

We put 2 large arrays close to the house but on the edge of one of my pastures. I know for a fact that things will grow under them, I have to mow it frequently. The only problem I could see with this is it would get trampled if work needed to be done. We just spent two weeks with the guys out here fixing a problem and they would have smashed a good part of any garden I might have had there.

We love having our arrays. We will hopefully get them paid off about the time we die so someone will be able to use them without having to make payments down the road.

[walkingman]

2. Ironically this is happening in rural Central Texas. We have a 2000 ac. solar farm being built

in our area that has many of the local stirred up and ready to declare war on the local school board for approving a tax abatement. The reasons vary from "destroying ranch land" to "we're paying a price to provide electricity to Austin".

Strangely, these same folks do not have a problem with fracking or pumpjacks or the nasty oil smell in the air but GOD Forbid that we have a means of energy that is limitless and doesn't pollute our air and water.

Whatcha gonna do?

[in2herbs]

4. There was a post on DU a couple of weeks ago where they're using solar panels to shade

water in the CAP and anticipate that it will reduce the evaporation of the water in the CAP.

[hunter]

5. I'm a "nimby" when it comes to solar or wind on previously undeveloped landscapes and seascapes.

"We had to destroy the environment in order to save it!"

Yeah, right.

Bulldozing wild desert areas for large scale solar projects, and offshore wind projects, are especially abhorrent to me.

I don't care if people put solar on rooftops and over parking lots, or if farmers allow wind turbines on their fields. These landscapes have already been destroyed by humans.

On the other hand I don't think hybrid natural gas / solar / wind powered electrical grids are going to save the world.

Aggressive renewable energy schemes in places like California, Denmark, and Germany have failed. They've only increased our long term dependence on natural gas. Unfortunately there's enough natural gas in the ground to destroy the natural environment as we know it. It's best we leave it there.

Germany has learned an especially hard lesson these past weeks. Their renewable energy schemes are dependent on Russian natural gas. Deprived of that natural gas they've had to revert to filthy coal to keep their economy afloat. Without abundant natural gas supplies the German electric grid is less able to utilize solar and wind energy.

[CrispyQ]

7. Six billion miracles is enough.

I bought that bumper sticker back around the turn of the century.

8 billion humans trying to live large is the problem no one talks about.

[hunter]

8. The political and economic empowerment of women is usually followed by decreasing birth rates.

How do we accomplish that?

It's an appropriate question on International Women's day.

First off I think every human being deserves a safe comfortable place to live, a place with indoor plumbing, clean tap water, and flush toilets connected to modern sewage treatment systems.

Every human deserves healthy interesting food.

Every human deserves a reliable and affordable supply of electricity.

Every human deserves realistic sex education and easily available birth control.

Working from those first principles we can "save the world."

Buying stuff from Elon Musk -- a Tesla, a Powerwall, and solar panels for your roof -- is just ordinary consumerism.