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Comment by happyopossum | Hacker News Reader

Some of the points in the article make sense at first blush, and may even be correct, but I lose hope when it starts out with a complete fabrication :

“Undeveloped land is a rapidly dwindling resource”

Note - roughly 6% of the US is developed space, less than 3% of that land is urban. [1]

The author then compounds the mistrust by stating that by 2050, we might need up to 0.5% of land dedicated to generating solar power.

ZERO POINT FIVE percent. And I’m supposed to think that’s a problem? 10 million acres out of the nearly 2 billion we have in this country? Yeah - that doesn’t concern me.

It’s a shame too, as I like solar canopied parking lots and think they make sense in some cases - making such weak justifications at the top of the article though, makes me think I may be wrong about it.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-10/the-real-...

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I would be curious what the arguments against solar canopied parking lots would be other than the cost of the installation (due to the obviousness of that one, sometimes something just costs more than it’s worth).

A parking lot on a hot day is one of my least favorite environments to walk through, and with solar cells or not, I’m surprised more parking lots aren’t at least shaded. Stick an installation up there and you could be powering the store or mall with some of that saving on utilities, maybe charging some cars and providing that all important shade. So I’ve always been curious what the arguments against it are, and the only one I can think of is the upfront cost of such an installation.

The cost is pretty much it.

the main one is that having giant above ground parking lots is awful in the first place. they dramatically reduce walkability and efficiency of other transit forms (by pointlessly lowering density), are ugly, and are (other than cost) way worse than underground parking or multi-story parking garages. putting solar panels on the parking lots makes them incredibly expensive to remove.

> the main one is that having giant above ground parking lots is awful in the first place

Sorry, I should have specified: I’m looking for reasons the property owner wouldn’t want to install solar canopied parking lots besides just cost.

E.g. Walmart is famous for their enormous parking lots and large corporate campuses in the suburbs often have large parking lots too, as do outdoor malls. It seems to me they would stand to benefit from installing canopies with solar panels seeing as how they’ve already dedicated vast swaths of their property to parking.

Yeah, I generally agree with the article but it's a weird kind of focus that makes it feel odd and a few claims rubbed me the wrong way too.

One charitable interpretation is that when discussing renewable energy with the American public you need to start by validating some of their current beliefs before sneaking some truth in, because if you just said "solar is cheap and green and we should have been building lots of it for years" you'd hit up against talking points they've been pre-programmed with.

Whereas if you start from "solar takes up lots of space and kills all biological life touched by its shadow" then they think you're one of them and you can subtly suggest that if you're already building canopies to keep the sun off of cars, then maybe solar panels would be good there?

It's analogous to pretending to believe that Covid-19 was a Chinese Bioweapon intentionally leaked from a lab, just so you can suggest to people that are otherwise beyond help that ".. and if that's true then maybe we should wear masks to prevent it spreading?".

Might help. Probably worth a go.

> Note - roughly 6% of the US is developed space, less than 3% of that land is urban.

Undeveloped land that people actually want to live on/near is a dwindling resource. Sure Kansas is filled massive amounts of undeveloped land but you don't see Americans rushing to move there.

Sounds like a good place to put solar panels then?

Transmitting electricity from Kansas to either of the coast sounds incredibly impractical.

I tend to like the food that Kansas is currently using its land for, so lets just look for some other less useable land that doesn't also grow food and tends to get a lot of sun while also being at least close to the west cost. Obviously, I'm talking Nevada, Arizona, and eastern California. Seems a much more practical option

Modern transmission lines lose very little power, and anyway the marginal cost to produce is zero.

So, no, there is no problem with shipping power around.

Seems like a nitpick, maybe “undeveloped but readily developable” would have been more accurate but doesn’t really change the story.

.5 percent of U.S. land would be 12 percent of already developed U.S. land, which is a lot. It’s doubtful that all generation will happen on top of that but as they point out, it’s more efficient to generate close to where power is used; you lose less power in transmission and need less land for transmission lines.

According to https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356705078_Zero_air_...

"Transitioning may create ∼4.7 million more permanent jobs than lost and requires only ∼0.29% and 0.55% of new U.S. land for footprint and spacing, respectively, less than the 1.3% occupied by the fossil industry today."

So getting rid of fossil fuels infrastructure in the USA and replacing it by renewable would give back 0.45% of land.

I am all for transitioning away from fossil fuels, the topic at hand is what’s better, adding solar on top of developed land or having it more centralized on undeveloped land (or redeveloped land) dedicated to this one purpose.

I wonder how they arrived at 1.3% of land for fossil fuels, my hunch is they included every gas station. Gas stations already make their profits from non-gas products and are even smaller than parking lots; many are more likely to remain a part of transportation infrastructure, as charging stations, though their size is a limiting factor due to the longer energy transfer times of electrics.

Some oil derrick and storage sites might be redeveloped for solar, ones that are less remote.

You’re ignoring the 47% of land (per that article) dedicated to agriculture.

There are waste amount of desert that is not used for agro or people.

And they are extremely far away from population centers, requiring significant investment in (and energy loss from) long distance high voltage lines.

'Deserts' in California are not that far away from population centers. The same goes for Texas. There is lots of unformed land around many major population centers and the energy loss from transporting energy is not actually that big.

The $ per acre per year one would get from putting PV there is much larger than what you'd get from agriculture (especially pasture).

Yeah, but humans need to eat?

Humans need to eat and farming is not very lucrative are consistent statements. Crop production is far beyond the bare minimum of what is needed; it's mostly to supply wants, not needs. As such, it's perfectly fine to trade it off against other things, like PV, that also supply wants.

You can have solar and crops on the same land, without hurting yield, but cutting water loss.

So, "dedicated to agriculture" is no blocker for also putting solar there.

Food crops. Famously don’t need the sun.

Are acknowledged to be equipped to make use of only a few hours of sun. Any more, they just endure.

I guess not all land is the same. Undeveloped land around NYC is scarce, and that’s where you want to have solar panels for the city.

No, you don't. There is way, way more of pasture and farmland than will ever be needed to site solar on, as putting up solar does not interfere with the other uses.

> The author then compounds the mistrust by stating that by 2050, we might need up to 0.5% of land dedicated to generating solar power. ZERO POINT FIVE percent. And I’m supposed to think that’s a problem? 10 million acres out of the nearly 2 billion we have

This comment reminds me of the early naïveté about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

CO2 increased from 0.03% to 0.04% of atmosphere? ZERO POINT ZERO ONE percent. And I’m supposed to think that’s a problem?

That is actually a 33% increase. Which is very significant. And the rate we are emitting it is increasing.

Isn't that the point: if 3% is used for urban development then another 0.5% is going to be very noticeable in cities.

Concern trolling.

There is absolutely no need to site on undeveloped land or to take land out of production. Solar coexists well with most uses, as with parking and roofs.

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