Doesn't Solar Take Up Too Much Land?
A solar or wind facility takes up so much more space than a nuclear power plant or a fossil fuel power plant.
That’s not wrong.
The problem is that this rhetoric doesn’t get into the nuances.
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The Problem With Solar Land Use Estimates
In many land use estimates, it’s only the land use of the generation facility that’s taken into consideration. What you see is what you get.
Pull back the curtain. How much land or other resources are required to mine the inputs (ie, coal mines) or deal with the unwanted outputs (ie, water cooling for nuclear)?
Consider the lifespan footprint requirements, not just now, which is especially important when the arguments of, “well, you have to mine minerals for solar, too, so the ‘mining’ question is a moot point.”
True. You do. But once the facilities are built, the inputs for solar and wind are free.
We have work to do when it comes to recycling programs for solar panels. But that’s due less to lack of ability, but due to lack of need. Currently, according to the USDA, most solar farms in the USA were installed after 2016. Panels are typically warrantied for 20 to 40 years.
Obviously, warranties don’t guarantee a piece of equipment will last that long. But generally, if a company is willing to back a product with a lengthy warranty, that means they have a high level of confidence that those products are going to last; it makes zero sense to dump millions into warranty programs for a 30 year warranty if your products will only last for ten.
Coal plants, however, are rapidly decommissioning, and it’s not just because of a covert plot to dismantle the fossil fuel industry, but because they’re old.
And everybody worries about solar farms “contaminating” soil and rendering it useless for generations to come, but nobody’s talking about what old coal mines are doing.
We need fossil fuels. But we also need to develop a more efficient way to use our land.
The Role of Agri-Energy
Solar and wind remain the only forms of energy development that allow for agriculture to exist simultaneously. Sure, it’s common to have oil wells in the middle of highly productive farm land. It’s true that the oil and gas industry generates a substantial income for American farmers.
But you’re not exactly able to graze sheep around the distillation towers of an oil refinery. You can’t grow broccoli in a coal mine (farming on reclaimed mineland is a hot topic, but that’s not what I’m talking about here).
The conversation about renewables vs. fossil fuels often comes down to what is the cheapest, and what gives the best “yields” (ie, the least amount of land used for the most amount of output). Those are important points, but they shouldn’t be the sword we die on when it comes to solar and wind.
You might lose a small amount of crop yield when you convert farmland into a solar farm and then continue to farm beneath it - but now, you’re growing *two* crops. Now, you’re maximizing land area in ways that “traditional” forms of energy generation just don’t.
Work smarter, not harder.
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