Comment by tyu1000 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tyu1000 | Hacker News Reader

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These huge renewable projects do have major ecological impact, why lie about it? Due to low power generation density they take up a lot of space compared to fossil fuel/nuclear plants and that's not including the large amount of power lines that have to be run to all these new facilities. There are well known negative ecological impacts from the solar farms in this area that others have pointed out.

Just because a desert or prairie ecosystem isn't as obvious a conservation target as a forest doesn't mean they are not valuable ecosystems that shouldn't be protected from development.

There's no free lunch in energy generation, every form of it has some ecological drawback. Look at this virgin forest that Georgetown University wants to cut down to put a solar facility up. How is this a net positive for the environment?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/georgetown-...

Well the alternative to more renewables is, realistically, more coal and gas. I think that covering up one or two percent of even the most valuable biomes with solar panels is no where near as destructive as climate change.

You conveniently forgot nuclear and your percents are off.

I support nuclear but it's impossible to build enough in the current political climate and it takes too long to build and is terribly expensive.

I don't think my percentages are off https://www.energy.gov/eere/solarpoweringamerica/solar-energ... 0.6% according to that article, so probably in the single digit percentages in real life.

Another alternative is reducing energy consumption. I'm sure the people of California have no problem with the consequences of that.

California already has some of the lowest per capita energy consumption in the US [1]. A good part of this is due to the mild climate where most Californians live, but some part of it choices people have made, like the widespread adoption of residential PV in cooling load dominated inland areas.

EVs are also taking hold faster in CA due to their better economics and broader cultural appeal in CA.

All these trends will lower the per capita energy consumption further without negatively affecting lifestyles.

1. https://www.eia.gov/state/seds/data.php?incfile=/state/seds/...

While it seems like a bad idea to cut down a forest to replace it with a solar farm, that's not virgin forest. As cited by the article, the land has been timbered before. There is almost no virgin forest left in the eastern US at this point.

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