Parking lots are better

 

A recent New York Times article highlighted the conflict between nature/wildlife and solar power development.

The Planet Needs Solar Power. Can We Build It Without Harming Nature?

"Animals need humans to solve climate change. But they also need places to live. Loss of habitat is the top driver of a staggering global decline in biodiversity, the variety of life on earth. The boom in solar, set to be the fastest-growing energy source in the United States, is predicted to fence off millions of acres across the nation, blanketing them in rows of glassy squares."

However, there is lots of acreage that has already been paved over, and offers a perfect place for the deployment of large-scale solar power with no additional loss of natural habitat. 

Parking lots.  

As I wrote several years ago.  In 2018, in fact.

And nothing has changed much since then.

Except that TIME magazine had this article at the end of 2022.

The Overlooked Solar Power Potential of America’s Parking Lots

And CNET wrote this in early 2023.

Solar Parking Lots Are a Win-Win Energy Idea. Why Aren't They the Norm?  It makes some of the same points I made way back in 2018.

And YaleEnvironment360 also had this in 2021.

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

But this one is interesting, because now we can find out why it isn't proliferating. (I added the italics.)

"One other reason for the persistent scarcity, according to Blocking The Sun, a 2017 report from Environment America, a Denver-based coalition of state environmental groups, is that utility and fossil fuel interests have repeatedly undermined government policies that would encourage rooftop and parking lot solar. That report described anti-solar lobbying by the Edison Electric Institute, representing publicly-owned utilities; the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a lobbying group known for inserting right-wing language into state laws; the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity; and the Consumer Energy Alliance, a fossil fuel-and-utility front group, among others.

Throwing Shade, a 2018 report from the Center for Biological Diversity, gave a failing grade to 10 states for policies that actively discourage rooftop solar. These states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin — represent a third of the nation’s rooftop solar potential, but delivered just 7.5 percent in 2017. They typically make it difficult for homeowners or property owners to install solar and connect it to the grid, or they prohibit a third party from paying for the installation. Most also lack a net-metering policy, or otherwise limit the ability of solar customers to feed the excess energy they produce by day into the grid, to be credited against what they take back at other times. Most also lack renewable-portfolio standards, which would require utilities to generate, or purchase, a portion of their electricity from renewable energy sources."

What a surprise that is not. 

Something sure needs to change, and I wish that I could be an agent of change. Meanwhile, I just have to hope somebody notices.

This is not hard to do!