benefit

Solar Canopies | Earth Wise

December 31, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There are plenty of solar panels on residential rooftops but there are also increasing numbers of arrays of them on croplands, arid lands, and grasslands. Large solar arrays are mostly built in open spaces like these rather than in developed areas. The reason is that it is cheaper to build on undeveloped land than on rooftops or construct covered parking lots.

However, building on undeveloped land is not necessarily the smartest idea. Undeveloped land is a dwindling resource that is needed for many different things: growing food, sheltering wildlife, storing and purifying water, preventing erosion, and sequestering carbon.

Putting solar panels on parking lots has the appeal that they are abundant, close to electricity customers, and are on land that already has been stripped of much of its biological value.

Putting a solar canopy over a parking lot can produce large amounts of electricity and has the added benefit that it would provide shade for cars. For example, a typical Walmart supercenter might have a five-acre parking lot, which is enough to support a 3-megawatt solar array. If Walmart put solar canopies on all of its 3,500+ super centers, it would provide 11 gigawatts of solar power – as much as a dozen large coal-fired power plants.

Solar canopies are still pretty uncommon, but some examples are ones at four DC Metro rail stations, one at JFK Airport, and a large one at the Rutgers University Piscataway campus.

Building parking lot solar canopies is much more expensive than putting solar arrays on open space, but they do eventually pay for themselves. Despite active opposition by utility and fossil fuel interests, solar canopies may eventually be a common sight.

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Why Putting Solar Canopies on Parking Lots Is a Smart Green Move

Photo, posted January 10, 2020, courtesy of Tony Webster via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Community Solar With Storage In New York | Earth Wise

November 16, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Community solar allows members of a community to share the benefits of solar power even if they cannot or prefer not to install solar panels on their own property. There are several models for how community solar works, but all of them allow members to benefit from solar power being generated by an offsite solar array by effectively allocating a portion of its output to them. In any event, community solar can save money on electric bills and allow people to make use of renewable energy for their needs.

A next step in the evolution of a decentralized energy system is incorporating energy storage into community solar projects. The first one of these in New York State has now been completed in Yorktown Heights in Westchester County. The project consists of 557kW of rooftop solar in the form of nearly 1,500 solar panels paired with 490kW of four-hour Tesla Powerpack battery energy storage. The system is expected to provide 150 participants with approximately 10% savings on their monthly electric bills over 25 years, as well as providing power to 12 Tesla electric vehicle charging stations.

The project was funded by NYSERDA, under its Retail Energy Storage Incentive program, which currently includes 50 community solar-storage paired projects across New York State that are expected to be installed in the next two to three years.

New York has been actively promoting community projects in support of goals announced by Governor Andrew Cuomo to install 6,000MW of solar in the state by 2025 and 3,000MW of energy storage by 2030.

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First community solar-storage project completed in New York

Photo, posted June 21, 2017, courtesy of Franck Michel via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Natural Habitats And Strawberry Farms | Earth Wise

April 22, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to a new study led by researchers from the University of California – Davis, conserving natural habitat around strawberry fields can protect farmers’ yields, their bottom line, and the environment. The study also suggests that conserving natural habitat in this way has no detectable threat to food safety.

In this study, which was recently published in the journal Ecological Applications, the research team conducted surveys and experiments at 20 strawberry farms along California’s Central Coast. This region is responsible for 43% of the nation’s strawberry production.

The researchers found that strawberry farmers were better off with natural habitat, like forests, grasslands, wetlands, and shrubs, around their farms than without it. According to the study’s models, adding natural habitat can reduce crop damage costs by 23%. Removing natural habitat can increase costs by as much as 76%.

Importantly, the strawberry farms with natural habitat surrounding them showed no signs of increased fecal contamination. While bird feces were regularly encountered on the ground, only 2 of 10,000 strawberries examined show signs of direct fecal contamination. Those contaminated berries would be discarded during the hand-harvesting process.

These findings run contradictory to current best practice recommendations that support natural habitat removal around strawberry farms in order to decrease bird fecal contamination and crop damage. These food safety requirements were a consequence of the deadly outbreak of E. coli in 2006, which was traced back to spinach grown in this region.

It seems like our agricultural landscapes can both support and benefit from biodiversity.

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Natural habitat around farms a win for strawberry growers, birds and consumers

Photo, posted June 16, 2011, courtesy of the USDA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

An Ecological Trap For Polar Bears | Earth Wise

March 17, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Climate change has been shrinking Arctic sea ice and this is causing changes in the behavior of polar bears. The Southern Beaufort Sea, located where the northern edges of Alaska and Canada meet, is home to one of the 19 population groups of polar bears. Historically, the polar bears in this region remained on sea ice year-round. But in recent decades, about a quarter of them have chosen to come on land instead of staying on the shrinking summer ice platform.

A recent study by San Diego Zoo Global, the U.S. Geological Survey, and Polar Bears International looked at the energetic consequences of the bears’ behavior. The decision of each individual bear to stay on the ice or move to land appears to be linked to the energetic cost or benefit of the choice.

Bears who moved to land expended more energy during the summer than bears that remained on the sea ice. In late summer, as the ice became even more restricted, a greater amount of energy was expended by bears swimming to land. So, the immediate energy cost of moving to land is much greater than remaining on the receding pack ice.

On the other hand, bears on land in this region have access to whale carcasses in the summer while bears on the sea ice appear to be fasting. As a result, it may be the case that the declining population of bears in this region is in part caused by the ecological trap of bears staying on the ice to avoid expending all the energy needed to move to land. The shrinking polar ice is a real problem for polar bears.

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Energetics Study Indicates that Shrinking Sea Ice Is Creating an Ecological Trap for Polar Bears

Photo, posted October 30, 2011, courtesy of Martin Lopatka via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Turning Trash Into Treasure

December 12, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Every year, 380 million tons of plastic are created worldwide, and that number continues to grow. Furthermore, more than 75% of these materials are discarded after one use. Much of it ends up in oceans and waterways, harming wildlife and spreading toxins.

Recycling most plastics is difficult because while they can be melted and reprocessed, the resultant material is not as structurally strong as the original material. Thus, plastics are often down-cycled such as turning plastic bottles into molded park benches.

Researchers at Northwestern University, Argonne National Laboratory, and Ames Laboratory have developed a new method for upcycling abundant, seemingly low-value plastics into high-quality liquid products, such as motor oils, lubricants, detergents, and even cosmetics. The catalytic method could remove plastic pollution from the environment and contribute to a circular economy.

Plastics don’t degrade when disposed of because they have very strong carbon-carbon bonds. Instead they just break into smaller bits, known as microplastics. The researchers viewed these strong bonds as an opportunity rather than a problem.

The new technique actually recoups the high energy that holds these bonds together by catalytically converting polyethylene molecules into value-added commercial products. The catalyst consists of platinum nanoparticles deposited onto perovskite nanocubes. Under moderate pressure and temperature, the catalyst cleaves the carbon-carbon bonds in plastic to produce high-quality liquid hydrocarbons.

The researchers believe these findings could lead to a future in which we can continue to benefit from plastic materials but do so in a way that is sustainable and less harmful to the environment.

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Turning plastic trash into treasure

Photo, posted August 15, 2012, courtesy of Emilian Robert Vicol via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Other Ways To Cut Vehicle Emissions

October 17, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

It is pretty clear that the way to drastically reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions is to switch as many vehicles as possible to electric power. As a result, more and more localities are putting in place policies that encourage electrification.

While there is no doubt that electrification is the long-term solution to vehicle emissions, a recent study by MIT and the Ford Motor Company found that, in the short term, there are some places in the US where electric cars are not the best way to reduce emissions.

The study looked at a variety of factors that affect the relative performance of vehicles. These include the role of low temperatures in reducing battery performance, regional differences in the average number of miles driven annually, and significant differences in the way electricity is generated in different parts of the US.

The results showed that electric vehicles definitely provide the greatest impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions for most of the country – and particularly on both coasts and in the south – but that there are some places in the upper Midwest where the greatest reduction would be achieved by the use of lightweight gasoline-powered vehicles.

In places like parts of Wisconsin and Michigan, it is mostly rural, there are cold winters, and electricity is predominantly generated by coal-powered plants. In these places, if gas-powered lightweight cars were to be used, the overall benefit would be greater than that of electric cars. Unfortunately, there are no high-volume lightweight gasoline-powered mid-sized cars on the market in the US. Ironically, the only cars of that class using lightweight aluminum construction are Teslas.

While electric cars are truly the long-term solution, the study does demonstrate the benefits of reducing the weight of vehicles.

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What’s the best way to cut vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions?

Photo, posted February 9, 2018, courtesy of Dave Field via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.