Desert Mega-solar and Agrivoltaics are a good tactic but poor strategy. Let’s try and make sense of our nations solar power strategy.
Just the parking lots in 12 western states, get us to more than
—> 4,500 square miles of available landscape that is ready-made for solar, won't require grading, (and the subsequent massive spread of invasive species/ displacing of native and endangered species.
This adds up to
—->2523 TWh per year
≈ 63.1% of US electricity consumption.
The BLM, Bureeau of Land Management itself expects that maybe,
—->c. 1,000sq mi
of public land as per the Western Solar Plan will be developed in solar by 2050.
The San Joaquin Valley, a major agricultural hub in California, is expected to fallow at least
—>c. 800 sq miles
of farmland by 2040,
and many armchair pundits would like to solarize all of it and several hundred thousand more acres of working farmland. This would be a disaster for rewilding.
Consider Tulare Lake. In the wet winters of both 1969 and 2024 this former largest lake west of the Mississippi has made a brief and glorious comeback before being quickly pumped dry for more monoculture farming. Imagine if the Tulare lake basin were developed with agrivoltaics, it would be a disaster for the indigenous supported dream of rewilding this ancient treasure of food web abundance.
Just because our energy utilities have a conflict of interest with distributed energy doesn’t mean we should keep industrializing our open spaces. Top down government efficiency could easily create incentives to favor more grassroots solar mega-projects and less green-washy ecocidal mega-projects.
For more in depth discussion check out Chris Clarke’s excellent podcast.
