South Korea Mandates Solar Panels for Public Parking Lots
reutersconnect.com
reutersconnect.com
It’s not the most cost effective way to install solar, though. A tall structure designed to put the panels high up in the air and leave a lot of space for cars is a lot more expensive than normal rooftop solar or even field setups. This is basically a way to force some of the cost of clean energy as a tax on parking lots. Which may not be a bad thing for dense cities where parking lots have their own externalities on the limited available land.
Rather than a tax on lots it's something that turns them into a source of revenue generation.
You assume there's still a lot of rooftop space that doesn't already have solar on it. SK has very high population density and long started moving toward "less efficient" installs like balcony solar because most 'easy' rooftops already have solar on them. Remember: the rest of the world is way ahead of the US on this stuff. The UK for example regularly sees nearly 100% renewable powering of their grid plus 'recharging' their pumped hydro and BSS reserves.
You declare that covered parking solar is more expensive than rooftop, with no supporting evidence whatsoever. Rooftop solar involves a great deal of site-specific design work, and a ton of on-site, dangerous labor, and usually has to meet tighter code standards. Rooftop work is some of the most dangerous work one can do; that makes it more expensive labor but also injuries and deaths have a substantial cost to society. And labor has to be more skilled.
Parking lot solar setups can be almost entirely assembled in factories, highly standardized down to just about the ground. That reduces parts, eases supply chains, sales inventory, repairs, etc. Final bolt-together and wiring connections are fast, easy, and don't require skilled labor. "Bolt this stuff together, plug this into this." Used or partially damaged systems and their components can be easily repaired or reused elsewhere.
Parking lot solar encompasses a LOT of panels which is more efficient as fixed costs are spread out more; rooftop solar is generally less-so because it's smaller and as mentioned involves a lot of site-specific work.
You ignore the energy savings from the cars being much cooler and not needing to waste as much energy. Being shaded also means the paint, trim, interior, etc stay in better condition longer.
You ignore that solar on-site coupled with EV chargers on site eliminates a lot of grid transmission losses. In theory a residential complex, employer, retail, or commercial site could set up something like this, pumping most of the energy into the cars parked underneath, and have a fairly small connection to the grid.
Bifacial panels suspended well over the ground can collect a not-insignificant amount of energy from their underside.
Solar panels suspended where they have lots of airflow over and under them run cooler, and produce more electricity.
You don't seem very well informed on the subject and probably shouldn't be commenting so confidently.
How many square yards of panels would one EV charger need an a typical afternoon / evening?
Super chargers, perhaps.
Most people drive so little that even just tiling the vehicles themselves will cover about 50-80% of the milage, albeit with the usual caveats like "seasons" and "who chooses to park in full sun?"
I drive to the mall.
I plug in the slow free charger (maybe ~3500W) as opposed to the paid one at >20000W.
Two hours later I have, say, about 7kWh topped up on my battery.
I now have restored about 40km range, so my 30km drive to and from the mall would be entirely restored.
You might say, oh this is fine, anything is better than nothing. But someone cheaper than you will think the same thing, and they will leave their car plugged into the charger all day long, because the cost of free surpasses everything. And it means that the charger will never be available.
Two things:
1. Parking itself doesn't have to be free, even if the energy was. (Though I don't expect the energy would ever be free in a case like this, because sending it out to the grid isn't that big a deal, and neither is micro-billing).
2. You seem to be imagining a single isolated parking space in a bigger parking area, whereas the article (if you can call it that, it's the size and depth of a tweet) is saying it is mandatory, at a quoted rate of:
80 or more spaces must install solar power generation facilities with a capacity of at least 100 kilowatts
> Global explicit subsidies for fossil fuels amounted to around $1.5 trillion in 2022. […] The $7 trillion figure includes the social and environmental costs of fossil fuels.
In the UK. A country that was one of the first to transition to renewable energy sources and which currently has one of the most expensive electricity prices. And then, to these "subsidies", losses from "road incidents" are added as other subsidies for fossil fuels.
Sorry, this is very difficult to perceive as an argument, it is literally designed for degenerates without education, who have difficulty understanding the meaning of words put together in sentences, and who, for this reason, evaluate any text by the presence of already familiar slogans in it
Yes, and I was talking specifically about the cost of this difference.
Your car already has the battery built right into it, so a trickle charge for eight hours while you're busy at work might be enough to cover your commute.
2 kW over 8 hours would be enough for 100 km per day.
I would be utterly devastated.
Though even without that, so what? The typical commute is not half a battery's worth of kilometres.
And even for the exceptions, you're allowed to have a split between parking spaces labelled "this juice is completely free but slow at the best of times and depends on the weather" and others labelled "this juice costs ¥¥¥/kWh but is backed by that hydro plant and will fill your batteries in 30 minutes".
I mean, parking spaces already get a split between long stay and short stay, it's not like people can't handle ideas like "free and meh vs. pricy and oooh", and likewise with fuel prices: https://www.istockphoto.com/de/foto/zapfsäule-in-usa-zeigt-p...
If anything all the panels can be connected together and charge the bosses cars up first and if there is any daylight left the charging can trickle down the org chart to the masses.
There's good points and then there's "let me add some random stuff on top"
We absolutely should see more trees in many cities, but they introduce their own challenges in parking lots, especially if they’re placed retroactively.
I think this is a tree density problem. Most cities have a small number of trees, and they’re almost always over cars. These are trees that line streets and parking lots. Without trees, birds just have telephone poles and wires, which are also over the cars.
In San Francisco, we have a lot of trees on most of our streets, and many parks small and big, all full of trees. This means birds spread themselves out everywhere, not just over cars.
I think the true barrier to getting more trees is that individuals tend not to want to pay for and maintain trees. This includes caring for the tree, trimming it when it gets bigger, and cleaning the pollen, leaves, fruits, and branches that fall.
In the US, maybe? Here in Western Europe the vast majority of this type of infrastructure is underground.
The city can simply introduce lizards to manage to bird issue.
This implies we want to maximise car parking spaces in a city, when, I think, you'd want to maximise enjoyment of the city.
/s
In South Korea, you usually don't see parking lots the size of several football fields like in the U.S., even around venues that generally attract a lot of cars, even in suburban areas. Instead, there are several stories of parking lots under every large building. Above-ground space is simply too valuable to waste on parking.
Unfortunately, you can't install solar panels underground.
I sometimes forget there are parts of the world where you can go more than about a metre down without breaking out the Kango hammer.
But if the only alternative to blasting the bedrock is to pay through your nose for prime real estate, blast the bedrock you will.
The solar panels go over the parking spaces, like a kind of a bridge, with supports at the sides. There's a lot of space in between.
If the trees were in the same space as the panels, they'd be in the midddle of the parking space. What you'd have then is not a car park, but just a plain ordinary park.
Notice how there are trees planted on the grassy strips between the rows of parking?
The solar panel supports take up a parking space at each end of the rows of bays with a lot of gaps in between.
Google Streetview is from 2009 - nothing newer, weirdly - but if you nose about you'll see what an insanely cool building it is. You can walk around in those roof gardens.
In your example, they could have likely built the solar array on the large lawn to the north for much cheaper and with easier maintenance. The fact that they chose this integration suggests that cost was secondary to corporate signaling and employee experience [0]. For most parking lots density isn't a design choice, it's a financial necessity.
The one I was talking about (still on construction) targets a working class suburb. The few trees were tightly packed between the parking spaces and the new roof's supports are as well placed mostly in-between spots. They cuter the tree because the shade and the impossible maintenance. The shaded rosebush were kept but are now dying.
Before: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MtNm2Ln846gQXgbq6 and After: https://maps.app.goo.gl/8HAHF6xjrwMsz1cRA
edit [0] Indeed, the roofs are part of their "Transition Plan" > As a key part of our ambition to consume 100% renewable electricity, Aviva has taken a significant step by installing a 1MW wind turbine at its Perth office in October 2024 In combination with our existing solar car ports and rooftop solar, the turbine will fully power the Perth office with 100% self-generated renewable energy for the majority of the year. It is expected to generate 1,700MWh annually, the equivalent to the electricity required to power over 620 homes. https://static.aviva.io/content/dam/aviva-corporate/document...
It's a very cool building indeed. I did all the radio equipment for the facilities and security guys about 15 (and maybe closer to 20) years ago which you can't quite see in the enclosure in the middle where the air handling stuff is. For testing I spent most of the day touring the building with an analyser checking signal strengths and drinking excellent coffee.
Almost makes me want to pack engineering and get into insurance sales.
> In your example, they could have likely built the solar array on the large lawn to the north for much cheaper and with easier maintenance.
They wouldn't have got planning permission for that.
> The one I was talking about (still on construction) targets a working class suburb.
Like this working-class (and fairly low-rent) part of Glasgow? https://maps.app.goo.gl/zKKz5HuywNnKhGY78
Sigh No, it's not. You can, and you should have trees in the middle of parking lots.
Examples (and these are not even good examples):
- https://maps.app.goo.gl/J4Ug8KyFcg8B481z5
Two birdnests have set up shop, both in my rafters (one on CCTV). My ceilinghooked bicycle will be decommissioned for this summer's nesters.
Unfortunately, being the only porch/shade: the cats are also prowling... figuring out the rooftop connections.
#PoopPorch2026
We often think 'if a little is good then a lot is better' but clearly that isn't the case for basically every resource. Take the 'put trees everywhere' concept to the extreme and you have a forest, not a city. I am 100% in favor of putting trees and parks in a lot of city spaces, so long as it encourages the city and doesn't create or expand city dead zones. People should be using that green space regularly. Not their cars and the more infrastructure dedicated to cars and car support the less there is for people and people support. Trees in parking lots is car support, not people support. I have never once in my life wanted to drive to a parking lot for the trees in it and rarely want to take mass transit or walk to a parking lot next to a park since I would rather a park that has great restaurants and other services near it, not a bunch of concrete for cars. You have to minimize the impact of a parking lot quickly to get use out of it. Expanding its footprint with trees isn't doing that, it is actively making things worse.
I would like someone better at maths than I am to work out how much petrol this saves drivers because you're getting into a car that's been parked in the shade and not running the air conditioning so hard.
I bet it's at least detectable, even if it's not much.
There are all kinds of bad externalities caused by seas of asphalt that is unused 95% of the time, but few countries are all that interested in using any mechanism to make the property owner pay for them.
It's great that when it snows you don't get nearly as much of the white stuff on your vehicle. But when it snows energy production slows to a crawl. We have a lot of snowy days a third of the year.
Same reason metal roofs are becoming popular in the area recently.
Since you emphasized height of the structures that need to be built, I have trouble imagining some 10 feet poles and material to support the panels would make a drastic difference versus rooftop installations. What specifically in the details of the installations make significant additions in cost?
(Without huge infrastructure dedicated to car welfare, Phoenix is uninhabitable.)
What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracaena_cinnabari or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilopsis?
That's true in many other places, too, like many European and US coastal cities where car ownership rates aren't nearly as high as many people probably think they are.
Maybe a more flexible policy could be something like: for every parking spot, you must add 1 kw of solar somewhere on your property (whether that's the parking lot or building roof or whatever is up to you) or add 2 kw of solar somewhere within a 20 miles of the site or add 3kw of solar somewhere in the US.
A lot of companies might find that the last option is the cheapest, and if that's the case we should want and encourage them to do that instead.
I still use my old ICE though, because the price of vehicles went through the roof those last years, which means the money I saved to replace it only gets me 60% of a car.
My point is telling or convincing people is not enough. The desired outcome must be oviously practical and cheaper.
On the other hand, I fully support the idea that you just wait till your car is actually ready to replace - that’s much more economical than going EV immediately with a car payment, just to check the EV box.
I also think there's a very reasonable middle ground where people can still practically have and use a car but it's not required literally every time you leave your house. Personally I think giving up my car would be a bridge too far since I like road trips and drives out to hiking areas and things like that, but I also find it unfortunate that there are limited options of affordable places to live where I don't need a car to do everything.
So, they just aren’t making many net new walkable cities or converting previously car-dependent ones into walkable paradises. The only newly-built ones are built on insanely expensive land (because of the proximity to great transit and/or very high paying jobs), so they’re really only feasible for people with at least $250k annual incomes, which isn’t most people. I think a lot of people know all this instinctively and therefore are against even talking about it because they see it as an unsolvable problem.
There is one political party who believes the US should do degrowth and major carbon regulations, but they have been losing relevance even at the state level lately.
Everyone is moving away from burning coal, even when they have plenty of plants in which to do so, because of the very same logic which had us burning it in the first place:
Price.
> There is one political party who believes the US should do degrowth
Yes, and I dated one of their campaign managers. However, the Green Party isn't relevant.
Chinese coal *consumption* seems to be trending down, not up, regardless of capacity: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
Sure, we've seen this rodeo before, circa 2015 -- when it dipped a few points, then it continued on its march toward coal supremacy since.
You'll have to convince me!
As an aside, your username reminds me it’s about time for another rewatch of cowboy bebop
South Korea is going to get a lot of 79-space parking lots.
As someone who has lived in Korea, this will be great for the apartment complex parking lots.
That said, I don't think it's aggressive enough. Why not scale with the number of parking spaces?
Depends on the colour of the cars and pavement. A PV will send ~20% of the light energy hitting it down the wire, the rest = heat.
PVs don’t really reflect back much light for obvious reasons.
The increased surface area might help it radiate more heat at night on a clear day, unless the panels are flat and then it’s no change really.
https://www.energy.gov/cmei/systems/solar-performance-and-ef...
Maybe I'm just using American mindset where there is lots of open land that is good for solar generation? Perhaps not true in Korea?
And let's not forget that they are investments, not just stranded costs (it's baffling to see them discussed that way to and down the thread). You get something back for having built them and the barrier to entry is the upfront cost, which is easier to overcome if you're a state spending on infrastructure.
Some people actually have an idea of how electricity works and statements like these make them think that the whole renewable energy industry is one big scam.
In your opinion, what percentage of the total cost is involved in tapping into the existing grid from nearest wasteland?
Same in parts of the UK. Scottish renewables are bottlenecked on transmission to London.
Whereas connecting generation to a substation near demand usually shows up as "negative demand" and doesn't require big upgrades.
Instead of just having a heat island, you generate power to run AC in the associated buildings, and you also get shade for the parked cars.
It was the same parking lot I saw many years ago. But this time, instead of feeling sorry for the owners of the cars that were obviously getting cooked up, that whole are was shaded in bajillion solar panels.
It seemed like such an obvious win-win for everyone, I expect it to catch on fairly quickly.
And it’s not like modern capitalism has done a good job of that anyhow.
If you're putting up structures to shade cars from bright sun anyway then it doesn't take a lot of legislative pressure to enforce "the thing you put up has to be solar panels".
Not familiar with SK, but in principle this parking shade had better be panels works. This is doable within both governmental, social and financial frameworks in countries that get decent sun. Whether SK qualifies as "decent sun"...idk...seems borderline to my unqualified eye
I think this might be partially an indirect tax on parking lots inside a dense city. It raises the cost of using land for parking, but does so in a way that provides shade and clean energy at the same time.
Also the "surrounded by high rises" locations are more likely to be built as parking garages in the first place.
Why do you assume they haven't been doing that already?
For comparison, the San Francisco Bay Area has a population density of 430/km² [2]
I doubt they have vast tracts of undeveloped land. And while solar panels can replace agricultural land or wooded areas, doing so isn't always a big political win.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area
Building where people live means (near) zero transmission infrastructure.
This hotel in India makes money from selling to the grid, in addition to their own electricity use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-AuPpqLO-o
However I am curious about the "NO USE FRANCE" text at the end of this article. Is this a licence issue or something? Would love it if someone with insight would be able to comment!
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...
In terms of the formatting/brevity, Reuters was originally a wire service. They'd cover news in foreign locations and send it by telegraphic wire to local newspapers that would license the content.
Telegraphs charged by the word and didn't have letter case. Cryptic in-band signals like "NO USE FRANCE" are a relic of that time.
Since the link OP posted is to the B2B part of Reuters, I'm assuming they still haven't modernized this system.
My best guess is that Chris Jung has some kind of an exclusivity contract for publishing in France. Looking at his website, he publishes in "Paris Match", a French magazine, so it may be related.
The best time was years ago, the second best time…
We see the results of initiatives like this in BC, Canada. About 10 years ago they passed a law that when any government building is getting a renovation of any kind, public EV chargers must be built in the parking lot.
The result is that every single town without exception has EV chargers now. The future is coming, despite some doing their best to slow it down.
If it's cost effective there's no need to mandate it.
If it's not cost effective but you want it anyway, you can explicitly subsidize it instead of mandating it.
Does South Korea do mandated parking minimums like I hear is common here in the US? That would tell whether this is a tax on business property in general, or a tax on driving / personal mobility specifically.
You should see how hard PG&E is working to prevent commercial and multifamily buildings from going solar. If the legislature voted to force PG&E to get out of the way, to allow property owners to do obviously cost-effective upgrades to their own properties, plenty of people would call it a “mandate”
If I owned the lot, I could take on no-risk (which may be why the lot was purchased to begin with), or take on a 6-figure investment that could bankrupt me if the demand for the lot vanished. (I suppose in that case you’d at least be making money on selling power back to the grid.)
Moreover electric transmission and distribution gains from limiting solar investment and there's a history of utilities being in tension with solar power and lobbying against it. Solar skips the power lines and utilities need people to need power lines.
Or, as happened in actual reality, you tell the owners they have to put it in place. Imagine that - the two weirdly specific things you came up with aren’t actually the only two options. Who would’ve thunk.
SK has population density of 530/sqkm(1.4k/sqmi), which is literally 14x over the US(37/sqkm or 96 sqmi). So I think it's likely that a lot of their public parking locations would be already in airport style multi level ordeal, and if so, erecting solar panels can be just the matter of laying out panels on already existing and likely less utilized top floor.
Wouldn't mind putting up panels if I could sell and use the power. But fuck governments telling property "owners" what they can or can't do.
Many Americans are permanently afraid of their government, and they have no confidence that their fellow citizens will man up and confront the government if necessary, so they'd rather have a permanently weakened government that can't serve its people well but somehow (miraculously) still capable of unleashing misery.
A comedic tragedy, really.
A mandate is an authoritative command, order, or authorization to act, typically given by a higher authority, such as voters, a court, or a governing body .
So in the sense that a mandate is passed by government, and governments are sometimes authoritarian? If your logic is stronger than that you'll need to explain it to me. I'm not saying Asian countries are not authoritarian, I take no stance on that, I just genuinely don't understand how mandates imply authoritarianism.
That is, parking lots paid for by government taxes?
Why is this mandate a bad idea?