Look for an old parking lot

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

The folks at ecoRI News are quite right to raise alarmsabout cutting down trees to make way for solar “farms’’.  See: https://www.ecori.org/green-opinions/2017/7/24/more-rhode-island-forest-set-to-be-sacrificed-for-energy-production.   

This is not a good way to expand renewable energy in an area that has lots of open space in vast empty parking lots around dead big-box stores and malls, landfills and brownfields, not to mention rooftops. By cutting down trees, we’re reducing the amount of oxygen that goes into our air, removing plants that help clean pollutants from the air and ravaging the complex ecosystem that depends on the trees.

This issue has come to the fore with the proposal by Southern Sky Renewable Energy LLC to clear-cut all the trees on 60 acres in the Ashaway section of Hopkinton, R.I., to make way for a 13.8-megawatt solar farm, with 43,000 panels. An estimated 30,000 trees would be cut down.

Increasing the use of non-carbon-based energy is essential and there are places where a lack of alternative sites justifies cutting down trees. But ina long-developed suburban/urban area such as Rhode Island, there are many places for solar arrays that canbe installed without damaging the rest of our ecosystem. And as Amazon and other forces continue to undermine malls and other retail centers, there will be many more.