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The green grab for land

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Solar and wind farms are spreading rapidly around the world.  Many economists believe that solar power has crossed the threshold where it is generally cheaper than other ways to make electricity and will become the dominant energy source in the next couple of decades.  As a result, both solar and wind farms are gobbling up more and more land around the world.  Estimates are that they will take up around 30,000 square miles by mid-century.

One concern is whether we are entering an era of trading food for energy.  Land conflicts seem inevitable since solar power operates best in unshaded areas with gentle winds and moderate temperatures, which are the same conditions favored by many crops.

China is installing more solar farms than the rest of the world combined.  Many of these are in the Gobi Desert, where there is no competing need for the land.  But some are in eastern China, in densely populated grain-growing areas.

There are a number of strategies that reduce the impact of solar farms on land use.  One approach is to put them on old industrial or brownfield sites that are otherwise unusable.  Another is floatovoltaics:  putting solar panels on the surface of lakes and reservoirs.  And then there is agrivoltaics, where solar panels are installed above crop fields or where livestock graze between or even beneath solar arrays.  China has more than 500 agrivoltaic projects that incorporate crops, livestock, aquafarming, greenhouses, and even tea plantations.

Green energy has both environmental and economic benefits to offer, but it must conserve nature and not excessively grab land needed for people, wildlife, and ecosystems.

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‘Green Grab’: Solar and Wind Boom Sparks Conflicts on Land Use

Photo, posted May 25, 2011, courtesy of Michael Mees via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A giant solar project for Google

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One of the largest solar projects in the US has recently come online in Texas.  Three solar farms built side-by-side in Buckholts, Texas by SB Energy can provide 875 megawatts of electricity, nearly the size of a typical nuclear power plant.  The project will supply the largest solar energy purchase ever made by Google and the electricity generated will be used to power its new operations in the area.  Google will use about 85% of the project’s solar power for data centers in Ellis County and for cloud computing in the Dallas Region.

In total, Google has contracted with clean energy developers to bring more than 2,800 megawatts of new wind and solar projects to Texas.  Google expects to spend $16 billion through 2040 to purchase clean energy for its global operations.

According to the International Energy Agency, data centers’ total electricity consumption could reach more than 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026, which is more than double the amount used in 2022.  One terawatt-hour is enough energy to power 70,000 homes for a year.  So, it is not surprising that large technology companies are investing heavily in energy technologies.

Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have all recently announced investments in nuclear energy to power data centers.  These companies all have made commitments to seek sources of carbon-free electricity to power their data centers and their increasing efforts in artificial intelligence.  Because of the rise of artificial intelligence, the large companies are not meeting their commitments to reduce their carbon emissions and are needing to greatly increase their efforts to obtain clean power.

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One of the largest solar projects in the US opens in Texas, backed by Google

Photo, posted March 27, 2016, courtesy of Ben Nuttall via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Solar farms and pollinators

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Two important environmental challenges are finding some literal common ground:  the need to reduce carbon emissions and the fight to stave off global biodiversity collapse.  Both issues can be addressed at solar farms.

Solar energy is an important weapon in the battle against climate change.  But utility-scale solar farms take up large amounts of land.  Large-scale solar farms already take up nearly a thousand square miles of land in the US and will take up much more in the coming decades.

In the meantime, the biodiversity collapse is being driven in large part by habitat loss.

Given all this, solar farm operators, biologists, and environmentalists are teaming up to grow pollinator-friendly plants in and around solar farms. The plantings attract insects, birds and even mammals. The more plant diversity in the solar farms, the more environmental benefits can be achieved. 

There are costs associated with creating pollinator-friendly solar farms. Ideally, solar panels need to be installed at greater height than otherwise in order to permit growing many of the plants that attract bees and butterflies.  But there are economic benefits associated with attracting and sustaining pollinators.  On a cautionary note, there have already been cases of greenwashing, where solar operators claim environmental benefits far in excess of the scope of the actual efforts they have made. 

There are both governmental and non-governmental agencies seeking to assess and certify pollinator-friendly solar farms.  There is considerable variability in the ecological value of existing farms.  Pollinator-friendly solar farms are in their early days, but they have a lot to offer as a win-win strategy for the environment.

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Solar Farms Have a Superpower Beyond Clean Energy

Photo, posted December 4, 2014, courtesy of Juwi Renewable Energies Limited via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Around-the-clock clean energy

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Using solar and wind power can go a long way toward replacing fossil fuel-generated electricity, particularly with the addition of battery energy storage.  But because of the intermittent nature of both sun and wind, other sources are still needed.  There is also the need for ways to produce high temperature for industrial processes.  Complete decarbonization will require a host of complementary technologies.

A spinout company from MIT called 247Solar is building high-temperature concentrated solar power systems that make use of overnight thermal energy storage to provide electric power around the clock as well as industrial-grade heat.

The system uses a field of sun-tracking mirrors to reflect sunlight to the top of a central tower.  A proprietary solar receiver heats air to over 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.  The heated air drives turbines that generate 400 kilowatts of electricity and produces 600 kilowatts of heat.  Some of the hot air is routed through a long-duration thermal energy storage system and the stored heat is then used to drive the turbines when the sun isn’t shining.  The unique part of the technology is not the concentrated solar power; it is the solar receiver.

The modular systems can be used as standalone microgrids for communities, or to provide power in remote places.  They can also be used in conjunction with conventional wind and solar farms to enable around-the-clock renewable power.

The first deployment will be with a large utility in India.  If it is successful, 247Solar hopes to scale up rapidly with other utilities, companies, and communities around the globe.

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Offering clean energy around the clock

Photo credit: 247Solar.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The end of coal in New England

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The last two coal-fired power plants in New England are scheduled to close by 2025 and 2028.  The New Hampshire-based plants are operated by Granite Shore Power.  The Schiller Station plant began operations in 1949 and the Merrimack Station was built in the 1960s.

Granite Shore Power has come to an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency as part of a settlement of lawsuits by the Conservation Law Foundation and the Sierra Club.  The two power plants were the subject of a five-year legal battle waged by clean energy advocates

Granite Shore Power intends to turn both of the sites into renewable energy parks.  The plants will be converted into solar farms and battery units that can be used to store electricity generated by offshore wind turbines along the Atlantic Coast.  Granite Shore Power bought the two power plants in 2018 with the intention of transitioning the coal generation systems into less polluting operations.

The battery storage system at the Schiller Station site in Portsmouth will be named the Jacona II in honor of a self-propelled floating power barge that brought power to parts of Maine and New Hampshire between 1919 and 1930.

Coal use has dropped dramatically in the United States in recent years as natural gas and renewable sources like wind and solar have become less expensive.  As of last year, coal only produced about 17% of American electricity and its use continues to decline. 

Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel.  In 2021, when it generated less than a quarter of the electricity produced in the US, it accounted for 59% of carbon emissions from electricity generation.

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The Last Coal-Fired Power Plants in New England Are to Close

Photo, posted October 14, 2015, courtesy of Eversource NH via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

 Restoring Biocrusts | Earth Wise

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Biocrusts are complex ecosystems that form a thin layer on the surface of soils in arid and semiarid environments.  They are composed of variety of microbes including cyanobacteria, green algae, fungi, lichens, and mosses.  Biocrusts play a crucial role in maintaining soil health and ecosystem sustainability.

Biocrusts are under assault from human activities including agriculture, urbanization, and off-road vehicle use. Climate change is also placing stress on biocrusts, which are struggling to adapt to increasing temperatures.

Researchers at Arizona State University have proposed a novel approach to restoring healthy biocrusts.  Their idea is to make use of solar energy farms as nurseries for generating fresh biocrust.  The arrays of solar panels serve as shields from excessive heat and allow biocrusts to flourish and develop.  The newly generated biocrusts can then be used to replenish arid lands where the existing biocrusts have been damaged or destroyed.

When such biocrusts are harvested, the natural recovery process is rather slow, taking around six or eight years to fully recuperate.  But the researchers found that when harvested areas are reinoculated with the microbes, the biocrust cover can reach near-original levels within a year.

The ASU researchers demonstrated the viability of the approach in a three-year study at a solar farm in Arizona’s lower Sonoran Desert.  Based on their results, they conclude that the use of large solar farms for this purpose could provide a low-cost, low-impact, and high-capacity method to regenerate biocrusts and enable soil restoration on a regional scale.  They have dubbed their new approach as “crustivoltaics.”

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Using solar farms to generate fresh desert soil crust

Photo, posted March 12, 2023, courtesy of Eric Peterson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Minimizing The Impact Of EVs On The Grid | Earth Wise

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Two current trends are the increasing reliance on renewable sources in the electric grid and the increasing use of electric vehicles.  According to some projections, these trends could lead to the need for costly new power plants to meet peak loads in the evening when cars are plugged in to charge.  Overproduction of power from solar farms during the daytime would require expanded energy storage capacity so as not to waste all that generating capacity.

A new study by MIT researchers has found that it is possible to mitigate or eliminate these problems without the need for advanced technological systems and complex infrastructure.  The key elements of the strategy are the strategic placement of charging stations and the practice of delaying the onset of home charging.

Better availability of charging stations at workplaces could help to soak up peak power being produced at midday from solar power installations.  In general, placing of charging stations in strategic ways, rather than letting them spring up just anywhere, could make a big difference.

Delaying home charging to times when there is less electricity demand could be accomplished with the use of a simple app that would estimate the time to begin the charging cycle so that it finishes charging just before the car is needed the next day.  Since different people have different schedules and needs, by delaying the onset of charging appropriately, not everyone will be charging at the same time, and therefore the peak in demand would be smoothed out.

There are substantial government funds earmarked for charging infrastructure and creating that infrastructure in suitably strategic ways could make a big difference in supporting EV adoption and supporting the power grid.

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Minimizing electric vehicles’ impact on the grid

Photo, posted July 2, 2020, courtesy of Ivan Radic via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Genetic Variation And Survivability | Earth Wise

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A massive but unintended experiment in animal conservation has revealed an unexpected result.  Thousands of desert tortoises moved to a translocation site in Nevada had a greater chance of surviving if they had lots of genetic variation.

From 1997 to 2014, over 9,000 Mojave desert tortoises were moved to a 39-square-mile translocation site in the Ivanpah Valley.  The tortoises were either abandoned pets or were displaced by developments in suburban Las Vegas and by solar farms in the desert.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service took blood samples to screen for diseases and marked each animal before releasing them into the site, enabling them to be tracked in later surveys.

When the researchers compared tortoises that lived or died over the same time period after being relocated to the site, they found that survivors averaged 23% greater heterozygosity than those that perished.  Heterozygosity is a measure of genetic variation.  Like most organisms, tortoises have two copies of their entire genome, with one from each parent.  The more those copies differ from each other, the higher the organism’s heterozygosity.

Researchers are not really sure why greater genetic variation is linked to survival rates.  Potentially, individuals with higher heterozygosity have more genomic flexibility.  It is the case that tortoises with more genetic variation have a better chance of having at least one copy of a gene that works really well in stressful or new environments.

Human activity and the changing climate are increasing the need to relocate plants and animals.  Often the chances for success in doing this are not good, so anything we can learn about things that increase the chances for survival can be very important.

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UCLA study of threatened desert tortoises offers new conservation strategy

Photo, posted August 23, 2016, courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management California via Flickr. Photo by Dana Wilson, BLM.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Last New York Coal Plant Closing | Earth Wise

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The last coal-fired power plant in New York State is closing.  The plant, located in Barker, about an hour’s drive from Buffalo, employs 44 people.  The plant’s closure is an early test of New York’s new climate law, which is one of the most ambitious in the country.  The law is supposed to transform the state’s energy grid to carbon-free by 2040. 

Coal plants across the country are going offline, priced out by natural gas and targeted by regulations and incentives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Coal plant closures bring common challenges:  lost tax revenues and jobs as well as efforts to retrain workers and clean up sites.  Every plant has a specific place in a community, and each community has its own story.

The new climate law is supposed to create thousands of new jobs, including high-paying union jobs like the ones the employees in Barker are losing.  But jobs are scarce in the northwest corner of the state where Barker is located.

The state government has recently issued rules that would make it easier to get permission to build renewable energy sites, including wind turbines and solar farms, allowing applicants to bypass zoning rules and other local regulations.  But residents of rural towns have environmental and aesthetic concerns about these potential new energy plants.

In 2010, the United States had 580 coal-fired power plants providing 45% of the country’s electricity. By March 2018, there were fewer than 350 plants and coal’s market share had dropped to 30%.  At this point, there are about 224 plants producing 18% of the country’s power.  The writing is on the wall for coal power.

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New York’s Last Coal-Fired Power Plant Is Closing

Photo, posted March 13, 2018, courtesy of Joed Viera via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Utility-Scale Solar On The Rise

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According to research from Goldman Sachs, utility-scale solar power capacity is expected to grow by double digits globally over the next two years.  The growth will be driven by expanding use of the technology in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and China.

Solar power is the world’s fastest growing source of electricity generation and is slowly taking market share from fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.  The transition is being driven by a combination of continuously lower prices for solar power and the impact of policies aimed at reducing emissions.

Utility-scale solar is defined as installations designed solely to feed electricity into the grid, in contrast to smaller-scale residential or commercial building units.  There are now solar farms larger than half a gigawatt in generating capacity.  According to the Goldman report, global utility-scale solar installations will reach 108 gigawatts in 2019, up 12% over the previous year, and will then grow another 10% to 119 gigawatts in 2020.

When residential and other smaller installations are included, most analysts expect global solar power capacity to soon hit 600 gigawatts.  To put this in perspective, the global capacity only reached 100 gigawatts in 2012 and was actually less than 10 gigawatts in 2007.

Even more dramatic than the growth of solar installations is the reduction in solar cost, and the two are obviously closely related.  Solar panel costs have dropped from around $70 per watt of electricity generated in 1980 to 36 cents per watt currently in the United States.  When favorable policies both from governments and related to corporate sustainability targets are added to the mix, the booming growth in solar power is easy to understand.

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Large-scale solar power set for double-digit growth: Goldman Sachs

Photo, posted March 7, 2019, courtesy of Hedgerow Inc via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

More Power From The Sun’s Heat

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When we think of solar power, we usually are talking about the panels that generate electricity using the photovoltaic effect.  These panels are on millions of rooftops around the world and in utility-scale solar farms.   There are also solar water heating systems that use the sun’s heat to provide hot water for homes and businesses.

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Farming In Solar Farms

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Utility-scale solar installations have been expanding rapidly.  The amount of land used for solar projects is becoming quite substantial.  The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) predicts that 3 million acres will be devoted to solar farms by 2030, and 6 million by 2050.  These numbers pale in comparison with the land used for corn, soybeans, and wheat, but are more than used for such familiar crops as oats, barley and rice.

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The End Of British Coal

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In the 19th century, Britain produced 80% of the world’s coal.  Britain was the dominant global power in the industrial revolution with its giant blast furnaces, steam locomotives and steam ships.  And with advent of the electric age, coal once again was the power source of choice.  Even as late as the 1970s, Britain got 80% of its electricity from burning coal.

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Utility-Scale Solar Power

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Solar panels on the roofs of houses have become a familiar sight in recent years, but utility-scale solar – installations of 10 megawatts and greater – are really booming these days.   Throughout the United States, more than 10.5 gigawatts of utility-scale solar were added to the electric grid in 2016 – enough to power more than 2 million homes – and at least 8 gigawatts more are scheduled to come online this year.

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Solar Power As A Crop

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The historic, relentless drought in California has caused a number of the state’s farmers to start planting photovoltaic panels instead of crops.  Because of the drought, Federal water deliveries to farmers in the Central Valley and elsewhere have been dwindling.   As a result of the water shortage, more than 500,000 acres will lie fallow this year.

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Solar Power And The Landscape

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solar-array

The use of solar power is growing rapidly but with all the growth, solar power only provides 1% of the country’s electricity.  On the other hand, in 2014, solar power accounted for almost a third of all the new US electric generating capacity.  According to the International Energy Agency, solar power could be the world’s leading source of electricity by the year 2050.

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