That is only marginally better in the scheme of things. They want to take farms for food out of commission in some places to replace with fragile and unreliable solar systems. Imagine installing this stuff on a large scale. If you plan to replace all the panels after 30 years and incur no losses from high winds, hail, vandals, etc., then you would need to overbuild the system by 20% at minimum. This is assuming modern panels are as durable as those old panels from the study too. 30 years ago, solar panels were built in the West and cost 10x as much as the ones we have now. So it seems reasonable to assume that brand new panels might not have the same characteristics, and be less durable. It would make a lot more sense to just put these panels on roofs and in parking lots where the real estate is already consumed, and the power can be a backup source instead of a grid-scale vulnerability.