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Earth

Solar Farms Look to Produce Something Apart From Power: Friendly Habitats for Wildlife (msn.com) 62

Posted by EditorDavid from the letting-the-sun-shine-in dept.
"Solar farms could blanket millions of acres in the United States over the coming decades," writes the New York Times.

But "the sites that capture that energy take up land that wildlife needs to survive and thrive." "We have to address both challenges at the same exact time," said Rebecca Hernandez, a professor of ecology at the University of California, Davis, whose research focuses on how to do just that. Insects, those small animals that play a mighty role in supporting life on Earth, are facing alarming declines. Solar farms can offer them food and shelter by providing a diverse mix of native plants. Such plants can also decrease erosion, nourish the soil and store planet-warming carbon. They can also attract insects that improve pollination of nearby crops...

On a recent morning at the solar meadow in Ramsey, it was time to count insects... In solar pollinator habitat, Minnesota was an early leader among states. Since 2017, funded by the Department of Energy, Lee Walston [a landscape ecologist at Argonne National Laboratory] has been studying sites there and throughout the Midwest. "If you build it, will they come?" he asks in his research. So far, the answer is a resounding yes, if you grow the right plants. In a study published late last year, his team found that insect abundance had tripled over five years on test plots at two other Minnesota solar sites. The abundance of native bees grew twentyfold. The results come amid a global decline of wildlife that leaders are struggling to address.

Some of the most well-known insect species are in trouble: Later this year, the federal government is expected to rule on whether to place monarch butterflies on the Endangered Species List. North American birds, for their part, are down almost 30% since 1970. But at this site, called Anoka County Solar, acoustic monitoring has documented 73 species of birds, presumably attracted by the buffet of seeds and insects. Some build nests in the structures supporting the panels. Mammals are showing up, too... What makes this meadow possible is the height of the panels. A prairie restoration firm had told ENGIE, the owner and developer, that taller panels would allow for a sharp increase in native vegetation species, providing much more ecological diversity, said John Gantner, the director of engineering and delivery for ENGIE's smaller-scale sites. The price of the additional steel and the native seeds were "insignificant to the overall project cost," Gantner said. Over the life of the project, ENGIE has found, pollinator-friendly landscaping actually saves money because it needs far less mowing...

Nationwide, it's unclear what portion of solar farms include any kind of pollinator habitat. The federal project that Walston is part of has a running rough count of just under 24,000 acres. That's compared with about 600,000 acres of currently operating large-scale sites across the country, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, with a sharp increase expected over the next couple decades.
The article adds that it also helps develoipers get their projects approved "at a time when communities are increasingly wary of vast solar farms. Developers are taking note..."

Others have also suggested "agrivoltaics" — where farming land is also used for generating renewable energy.
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Solar Farms Look to Produce Something Apart From Power: Friendly Habitats for Wildlife More

Solar Farms Look to Produce Something Apart From Power: Friendly Habitats for Wildlife

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  • just plant some bushes and shit. not hard or brilliant
    • Species matter. If you plant a species of plant that draws invasive species or even if it's just a preferred food of, say deer, you will be drawing insects or animals that you do not want.

      If you pick flowering species that dry out to the point of brown in the fall, your solar farm is now a brush fire waiting to happen - that can get expensive.

      Well I suppose you could choose something that has many flowers for insects but eaten to the ground by deer before becoming dry brush in the fall, that's a win?

      • Deserts and semi-deserts are often used for grazing cattle, sheep, or goats.

        All of them, especially sheep and goats, will keep the vegetation down.

        Plant growth in deserts is limited by water, not sunshine. If the panels are spaced so the ground under them gets 50% exposure and 50% shade as the sun moves across the sky, the pasture yield will be higher than before the panels were installed.

        There are already many areas where livestock are grazing under solar panels.

        Dual-use is a win-win.

      • Generally the idea is to use the species native to the area.

      • In nature fire burns through fast and at a relatively low temperature. Native plants are adapted to survive those types of fires. Problems typically happen when humans disrupt natural systems. For example, a lot of peat land has been drained. Peat can smoulder underground for months or even years, and it can release massive amounts of smoke.
    • It does actually take some gardening & ecology know-how to design a self-sustaining ecosystem that attracts the right kinds of animals & doesn't damage the solar infrastructure. They may have to adapt to the changing climate conditions in the foreseeable future too.

  • Huh (Score:3)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday September 08, 2024 @03:47PM (#64772566)

    The results come amid a global decline of wildlife that leaders are struggling to address.

    It's almost as if cutting down forests [jalopnik.com] and building over every piece of open ground plays no role in this decline.

    • Sorry but your comment is misguided horseshit. Not the underlying principle to be clear, we absolutely have a massive problem with global deforestation. But while I hate Elon Musk with a passion, the absurdity that expanding an EV factory by cutting down a bit of forest in a country *not* specifically suffering from ecological decline, in an area where no wildlife was threatened and an ecological study was conducted, is just stupid.

      There were literally thousands of examples from around the world of actual m

  • Rewild! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mspohr ( 589790 ) on Sunday September 08, 2024 @04:09PM (#64772626)

    There are several approaches to re-wilding land that has been cleared and burned and turned over to industrial agriculture.
    The simplest solution is to do nothing and just let mother nature take its course by seeding from surrounding land. Sometimes this works and it is cheap.
    Sometimes you need to be more proactive and plant trees and grasses selected for the environmental conditions.
    Either way, it's well worth doing since it restores a wide variety of plants and animals that make up a healthy ecosystem.

    (BTW, if we would eat less meat, up to 70% of current farmland could be released for re-wilding.)

    • (BTW, if we would eat less meat, up to 70% of current farmland could be released for re-wilding.)

      Farming meat under everything except corporate farms is all about using land with its native vegetation. The land is not destroyed when farmed like this. Your numbers are way too skewed to be anything other than an anti-meat propaganda item. Have a nice day.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mspohr ( 589790 )

        95% + of meat is corporate factory farmed.
        Good luck finding a happy cow in a local pasture.
        70% of farming land is used to raise animals and feed for animals.

        • Weird. I can drive down the road and see happy cows wandering around huge pastures. Should I move to California where I can smell the factory farms from 17 miles away?

  • I mean, the best option is to leave an area alone. (Score:3)

    by w3woody ( 44457 ) on Sunday September 08, 2024 @04:35PM (#64772666) Homepage

    Granted, we need a metric shitload of land for solar cells to power the world, and granted the easiest (in terms of politics and zoning requirements) is to build out in the middle of nowhere, especially on land that no-one seems to be using. You know, like out in the middle of the desert. [latimes.com] But the reality is, no matter what you do, you're substantially changing the environment, especially if you're building on "empty" land. (Read: land that is currently being used by wildlife, some of which we may want to protect.)

    And the best thing you can do for the environment is to leave it alone, untouched and unspoiled.

    But that means sorting out the political, logistical, and economic problems of doing things like building solar panels over existing parking lots (where someone other than the energy company may want a cut of the profits for using their parking lot). And we can't have that, can we.

    And I'm not terribly certain the irony in those maps showing how inefficiently we're using urban spaces, by showing us maps of "inefficiently used" parking lots--thinking "gosh, I see a lot of potential for solar panel installation."

    But what do I know?

    Don't mind me; I'm going to go birding in a few minutes, in some of the dwindling acreage in this country that is relatively untouched.

    • Solar belongs on rooftops which is already unused area. Solar blocks the sun so the area is used: No agriculture, nor nature under it. Windpower is much better, as the area beneath can be farmed or left to nature.

      • This is about finding co-existence. Forests have life on the floor even though the sun barely gets there. Panels can be installed so there's significant sun that comes through throughout the day.

      • > Solar blocks the sun so the area is used: No agriculture, nor nature under it.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        =Smidge=

        • Why does everybody believe that solar arrays HAVE to cover unoccupied land? How many thousands of square miles of land are ALREADY covered by human constructions? Why can't the solar arrays be built ON TOP of those constructions? No wild land needs to be touched. No agricultural land needs to be covered. Homes, barns, stables, gas stations, stores, parking lots, parking garages... literally ANY structure already in place can hold an array of solar panels AND not only generate electricity but ALSO shade the

          • Re: I mean, the best option is... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Sunday September 08, 2024 @08:10PM (#64773026) Journal

            I don't know about "HAVE" to, but there's a few hurdles with putting them on already developed land.

            First and foremost is ownership. Developed land is typically partitioned off into lots with individual owners. This means either a utility needs to form a contract with each individual property owner (including compensation, access rights, who is responsible for what, establishing liabilities, etc) or you need to convince each individual owner to install separate systems on their own dime. Either way it's a logistical headache since each site will present its own logistical, structural, and electrical interconnect challenges.

            Or you can go out to where there's little to no existing development, buy or lease a huge lot of land for really cheap, and install solar in one large and contiguous project.

            I agree that installing PV at the point of use (e.g. rooftops, parking lots, etc) is optimal for efficiency and resiliency, but it's not hard to see why large installers prefer the second option.
            =Smidge=

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by shilly ( 142940 )

            I mean, this is already happening, and will happen at greater pace, and some countries like have introduced new laws that encourage it (eg the French law requiring new parking lots to be covered with solar panels and have EV charging). But:
            1. Land remains pretty cheap and plentiful. If we can afford to use land for golf courses, we can afford to use it for solar. There's way more golf course acreage than solar
            2. Scale is a thing. It's vastly cheaper to put in a huge solar farm than any resi or commercial ro

          • They can be useful over pasture land as sheep, cattle etc don't like being in the sun/rain all day and its very rare to see a farm with shelter for the animals in the fields

      • Re: I mean, the best option is to leave an area al (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Shades72 ( 6355170 ) on Sunday September 08, 2024 @10:22PM (#64773160)

        Well, I live in South-America. In a country where the summer sun heats up the earth to 50 degrees Celcius on occasion. Summer is always between 35 and 45 degrees Celcius. Heck the last 3 years or so, even spring hits those temperatures easily.

        Plants that grow natively here are supposed to be able to deal with such temperatures. Except they don't. Terrain that is fully exposed on summer days, you see the vegetation die away. Sure, you can sprinkle all you want, but the terrain that is exposed gets so hot for so long, it becomes hard enough to prevent roots from growing deep enough to find sustainable levels of water. And then you have idiots who think that: "oh, the grass is longer than centimeters, cut it down." But by doing so, they expose the land in which the grass grows.

        Now, I have trees in my garden. It is getting harder each year to keep even the grass growing that is "bathing" in the sun. No amount of fertilizing and spraying with water helps. Yet, the places that only receive 3 or 4 hours of morning-/evening sun grow like weed.

        Agrivoltaics work. Shade works. By claiming that plants should get all the sun always, either show that you don't know enough of plants or that you are extremely fond of cacti. Plants should get enough sunlight, preferably not from the harsh midday sun though. That is why shade from voltaic cells really helps keeping plants alive, instead of causing harm as you claim. I would plant more trees than the lot I am allowed from municipal regulations. The shade helps so much keeping my house cool in summer and the shade that is casted makes plants actually thrive.

        Soon as I have saved up enough money I will invest that in vertical solar panels. Which I can place strategically so I block a lot of summer sun in the evening as it angles below the tree's foliage and start heating up my house again. Mid-summer the temperatures usually only drop to 40 degrees Celcius as the sun can get really strong here in these parts of the world. So whatever sunlight I can block from landing on my house at morning, midday and evening I will, preferably with natural means like trees. But solar panels would work as well...and whatever those can shave off more from my electric bill the better. Couldn't care less about delivering power back into the grid.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shilly ( 142940 )

        It's almost as if you're unaware of agrivoltaics.

      • Solar installations where the panels are very low to the ground might block all sunlight. But if you raise the panels just a few feet, you will get morning and evening sun to the area below the panels. Most horticulture benefits from getting a break from the high-noon sun. I realize this might not be true for some desert plants specifically adapted to harsh sunlight but most plants are happier if they get a mid-day hiatus from scorching sun. Especially true as the climate warms.

  • True delusional thinking. Say anything. Yeah, animals try to adapt to their environment. The environment you destroyed with solar panels.

  • The summary says "New York Times" but links to MSN, who's reposting IndiaTimes, who's reposting The Economic Times, who credits Catrin Einhorn or Reuters news service as the source.

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