Very often the fields that those solar panels are covering are land fills or polluted sites that would be unsuitable for any kind of building or agriculture due to contamination. Utility grade solar often seeks out land that is already disturbed and unsuitable for other purposes because it’s cheap.
Covering parking lots with solar panels doesn’t make them any less horrible, we should all be aiming towards as little wasted space as possible. Which means no parking lots.
Solar has gotten so cheap to install that solar and wind contractors have been going around the farms around where I live and using high pressure sales and political tactics to buy up good farm land that’s been farmed for generations by small family farmers to instead setup solar panels. It’s been interesting watching the fight and reactions from the sidelines because there’s misinformation being thrown around by both the pro- and anti- solar factions (much more by the anti-solar faction of course) but there’s no avoiding that they bought out 2 family farms to do a particular solar project near me, so that’s two fewer small farms that will probably never return to growing crops
If you’re in the US it would be worth talking to your town and town’s planning board then. It would be up to the town planning board whether or not that was an acceptable use of that specific land in that specific area. A developer would only buy that land if they knew they would get a build permit. You can attend a meeting and there’s usually a time slot for a public input session on the agenda and you can bring that up. If you’re not in the US I’m not sure how it works but it might be similar.
These are all farms outside of city limits of course, that way the energy companies can avoid the most local layer of government and just interact with the county/state level.
I’m honestly not sure how I feel about these projects. On one hand I don’t want to see fewer small farms, on the other I’m happy to see more solar and wind energy come online, plus if they’re looking at setting up solar/wind at the scale of acres upon acres of solar, their only options are either to take up existing farm land (which lets be real, only about 5% of is producing food that we eat) or to mow down all of the trees and natural growth on undeveloped land that folks keep for hunting, thereby taking away space from wildlife
Or allowing a farmer to let land go fallow and the soil to rebuild while still get a paycheck rather than buckling to sell to a suburban developer (and more carparks).
Very often the fields that those solar panels are covering are land fills or polluted sites that would be unsuitable for any kind of building or agriculture due to contamination. Utility grade solar often seeks out land that is already disturbed and unsuitable for other purposes because it’s cheap.
Covering parking lots with solar panels doesn’t make them any less horrible, we should all be aiming towards as little wasted space as possible. Which means no parking lots.
Solar has gotten so cheap to install that solar and wind contractors have been going around the farms around where I live and using high pressure sales and political tactics to buy up good farm land that’s been farmed for generations by small family farmers to instead setup solar panels. It’s been interesting watching the fight and reactions from the sidelines because there’s misinformation being thrown around by both the pro- and anti- solar factions (much more by the anti-solar faction of course) but there’s no avoiding that they bought out 2 family farms to do a particular solar project near me, so that’s two fewer small farms that will probably never return to growing crops
If you’re in the US it would be worth talking to your town and town’s planning board then. It would be up to the town planning board whether or not that was an acceptable use of that specific land in that specific area. A developer would only buy that land if they knew they would get a build permit. You can attend a meeting and there’s usually a time slot for a public input session on the agenda and you can bring that up. If you’re not in the US I’m not sure how it works but it might be similar.
These are all farms outside of city limits of course, that way the energy companies can avoid the most local layer of government and just interact with the county/state level.
I’m honestly not sure how I feel about these projects. On one hand I don’t want to see fewer small farms, on the other I’m happy to see more solar and wind energy come online, plus if they’re looking at setting up solar/wind at the scale of acres upon acres of solar, their only options are either to take up existing farm land (which lets be real, only about 5% of is producing food that we eat) or to mow down all of the trees and natural growth on undeveloped land that folks keep for hunting, thereby taking away space from wildlife
Or allowing a farmer to let land go fallow and the soil to rebuild while still get a paycheck rather than buckling to sell to a suburban developer (and more carparks).