Solar arrays and trees
On roofs when possible.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Inevitably, some residents of New England suburban or exurban areas are duking it out with solar-energy developers. The residents complain that too much open land and woods are being taken for the solar arrays near them. Two recent hot spots for these fights are Johnston, R.I., and cranberry-bog country in Wareham and Carver, Mass.
Well, the world is heating up and the more renewables we use the worse it is for such murderous petrostate dictators as Vladimir Putin. And bear in mind that much land being eyed for solar arrays might instead be turned into housing projects if the solar is blocked. Most locals would probably hate that even more than “solar farms,’’ in part because local property taxes would have to go up to pay for public services.
The saddest thing in this is cutting down woods to make way for the arrays. Of course, trees are huge absorbers of the carbon dioxide spewed out by our burning fossil fuel. But putting up solar arrays more than makes up for the loss of the equivalent space in woodland in terms of CO2 control, at least given current and projected technology and (wasteful!) electricity use. (The Ukraine war and the energy crisis it has caused is speeding renewable-energy research and development.)
John Reilly, co-director of MIT's program on the science and policy of global change, estimated for WGBH how much power would be generated if about 2.5 acres were clear cut to put up solar panels. WGBH reported: “He figured out you’d make up for all the carbon stored in those trees in just 46 days, if you were preventing that same amount of energy from being generated by carbon-emitting coal, or 23 days, if you were offsetting natural gas.’’
He said: “’There is a carbon loss from the trees, but it's made up fairly quickly. You're going to operate that solar panel for 20 years."’
Of course, the flora and fauna in woods should be protected as much as possible amidst the urgent need for us to burn much less natural gas and oil. Still, there’s a little bit of irony here. Much of the woodland that neighbors are trying to protect was open farmland in the early and mid 19th Century, before competition from Midwest farms and the rise of manufacturing in New England drew most people off the farms and the woods grew back. Take a look at some old pictures.
In any case, solar developers should make sure that there’s vegetation (to give off oxygen and provide a bit of ecosystem for birds and animals) under the arrays and not just barren dirt. And hire goats to keep it from getting too high?
There will be painful, or at least inconvenient tradeoffs as we wean ourselves off the still necessary poison that is fossil fuel.
We certainly could do much more to minimize the aesthetic pain of some neighbors by putting solar panels on many more buildings large and small instead of on land. Use, for example, those vacant parking lots at dead malls and elsewhere for solar arrays, while waiting for new clean-energy sources, be it hydrogen, fusion or something else to come on line. There’s probably a recession coming soon, slowing building construction and cooling property-price inflation. Take advantage of that to take more vacant urban and suburban land for solar?
Hit this link for the WGBH trees vs. solar story.
More trees now.
Note the open land.