Solar is great, but IMO we should be somehow encouraging rooftop solar (which, yes, is more expensive!) in order to reduce pressure on wilderness and agriculture.
Before someone jumps in with the efficient market hypothesis, fundamentally the problem is that wilderness services aren't easily priced correctly, but solar has suddenly made chopping down wilderness (more) easily monetizable.
That wilderness isn’t going to be there anyway if we don’t address climate change as fast as we can.
>That wilderness isn’t going to be there anyway if we don’t address climate change as fast as we can.
By the same token, fixing climate change won't matter if we don't have any wilderness services left.
Either crisis will be catastrophic, and we need to fix both. I sometimes worry that we focus too much on just GHG climate change, to the exclusion of other issues like biodiversity, water, soil, etc.
Other plusses are that they are close to electric demand (business, homes, and EVs), and people prefer to park in shade.
The downside is there's no existing structure to install the panels, so that's more steel used to mount the panels.
There are numerous examples of that around where we live, in the foothills of the mountains north of Phoenix, where there are also lots of recent modern construction projects. One nice installation at a school a few minutes away has the panels on structures providing shade, all over blacktop, as you thought of.
In addition to the sibling comments, another better approach is to blend solar with farming, to grow shade-loving crops and reduce evaporation. They'll still use pesticides, no doubt, but not more than ordinary farming.
https://theconversation.com/how-shading-crops-with-solar-pan...
Unless you have some weird quirk where you think it's impossible for manmade objects to be beautiful
I agree :)
We have the same issue around me with people chaining themselves to bulldozers and pushing for animal sanctuary designations just so they can avoid having to see windmills on the horizon.