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Comment by Pxtl | Hacker News Reader

Smarter greener move is to not have surface-level parking in the first place.

We know how to build green. We know what it looks like. It looks like dense, urban living. There's a reason the lowest carbon state is New York, and the lowest carbon nation per-GDP is France.

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France is not the lowest, it's beaten by a host of other countries:

- France 0.1

- Sweden 0.06

- Somalia 0.04

- Congo 0.03

In fact a lot of countries in Europe/South America hover around the 0.1 mark.

Okay, but in places where surface-level parking already exists, why not put solar over it?

Because that makes it that those parking lots will stay there for 25 more years. You want to remove these parking lots systematically from any kind of urban or even subburban environment as soon as possible. Not invest more into them. That is a far more worthy investment.

Looking at Rutger campus, used as an example in the article, https://osm.org/go/ZctEjpw05- up to 50% of the area seems to be for car infrastructure. That's a lot of area.

It doesn't imply that the parking lots will stay there for 25 more years. It implies that until it is more valuable to construct something else on that land, the PV array would remain there for 25 more years. Whether or not parking is allowed under the array is entirely orthogonal.

You can't put a building there so most likely it would remain a parking lot. Sure in theory you could have a out-door market there but that is an extreme minority case.

There are simply not many other land uses that are compatible with installed installed solar panels.

And the chances of some other use is less likely if more is invested in the land.

Roof is still an option.

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