Catching Some Rays

Throwing a few solar panels on your roof can reduce your energy bill. And the ones that cover many school parking lots in my county are a step in the right direction. But to make the kind of impact required to hit climate related goals, we need massive solar installations and for those we need big plots of land. But here’s the rub: “To meet these federally mandated climate goals, the solar industry requires land, and lots of it, but many rural and predominantly conservative areas remain unfriendly to renewable energy.” One solution catching on is called Agrivoltaics: “The practice of sharing energy and food production on the same plot of land — that can include a range of agricultural practices, such as farming, beekeeping, agroforestry, aquaculture and solar grazing.” The lightbulb moment: When landowners realize that they can monetize the same plot of land twice. WaPo (Gift Article): Under a Texas sun, agrivoltaics offer farmers a new way to make money.

+ “The electrical grid in Texas has breezed through a summer in which, despite milder temperatures, the state again reached record levels of energy demand. It did so largely thanks to the substantial expansion of new solar farms.” NYT (Gift Article): America’s Oil Country Increasingly Runs on Renewables.

+ Seems like a reasonable time to ponder the difference between political pandering and the real solutions happening on the ground while listening to Texas Sun.