We have all seen images of billowing pollution from the smokestacks of power plants and have heard of the many harmful impacts these operations have on our health, air, water, and climate. For the sake of a stable and livable future, it is clear that we must end our dependence on fossil fuels. Yet although many people are aware of this imperative, there has been local opposition to many large-scale solar projects in Wisconsin. There are several major misconceptions about utility-scale solar in particular. These false notions are often held by well-meaning people who share many of our values, but represent a barrier to necessary green energy action.
Myth 1: Utility-scale solar plants take up too much land and are a waste of agricultural land.
One argument given by critics of utility-scale solar plants is that it takes up far more land than a fossil fuel plant producing the same amount of energy. While it is true that solar farms can be spread across a larger area than fossil fuel plants, it isn’t an accurate picture of land use in the electric sector.
First, this fact ignores the large amount of land used to mine the coal to be burned at that smaller plant. In fact, mining, and in particular strip mining, continues to expand the operation to produce more coal. Once the coal on a stretch of land is used up, the mining company must dig on another tract. As this process happens, toxic chemicals are released from the mining process and leach into the soil and groundwater. This land is then rendered unusable for agriculture.
In contrast to the expanding land use of fossil fuels, solar panels sit on the same patch of ground year after year, and do not gradually eat up ever more fertile lands to produce more energy. A useful metric to compare the two impacts is “Acres per GWh per year,” indicating the acres needed to produce a unit of electricity annually by energy type. This measure includes mining in its figures. While coal has an impact of 11.11 Acres/GWh/year, solar has only 8.33 Acres/GWh/year [1]. Although natural gas has a lower Acres/GWh/year value than solar, this energy source still comes with many impacts such as leakage of extraction chemicals into water supplies, sulfate and carbon dioxide emissions, and methane leaks (see our past blog about why gas is not a bridge fuel).
Two comparative statistics put the concerns about solar land use into perspective: 1.4 million square miles of the US are currently farmland (40% of the entire nation’s land) but only 20,000 square miles would be needed to provide solar energy for the entire country [2]. Even more important to remember is that many farmers already employ dual-use techniques to get the revenue and reduced evaporation provided by solar panels, while maintaining crop growth. Far from a competitor for arable land, solar can be an augmentation to farmers’ existing revenue from crops.
RENEW Wisconsin adds: “Solar farms are often placed on privately owned land. Participating landowners voluntarily lease their land to host all or a portion of a solar farm and receive annual lease payments in return. The participating landowners find that the long-term lease payments are financially attractive, often because they can help supplement farm income and provide a hedge against changing commodity prices for corn, soybeans, milk, and cattle. Participating landowners bear no construction or operating expenses for the solar arrays. The project will be decommissioned and the land will be restored at the end of the solar farm’s useful life.”
Myth 2: Solar farms are ugly and negatively impact property value.
Many of the concerns that individuals share about solar farms are that they are unattractive and ruin the landscape. While we cannot dictate any individual’s personal taste in aesthetics, the claims often linked with this “Not In My Backyard” attitude are false.
One of the aesthetic concerns is that solar panels will create a glare. However, photovoltaic (PV) panels are designed to absorb sunlight and have anti-reflective coatings. The result? Modern PV reflects as little as 2% of incoming sunlight, less than soil and about the same as water.
Solar farms are sometimes described as “a blight on the landscape,” but can a field of panels be considered more aesthetically appealing than a tract of land destroyed by fossil fuel extraction? Solar farms are good neighbors. They are quiet, do not involve combustion, do not produce pollution, and no water is required for operation. When paired with native vegetation under the arrays, flooding and pollution runoff is better managed and native pollinator species have access to habitat.
Additional concerns about the appearance of solar panels are linked to fear of decreased property values. A number of studies have found no evidence of decreased property values after construction of a solar farm.
Myth 3: Solar panel production is as damaging as fossil fuel production, if not more.
Another objection to utility-scale solar is that the production of the solar panels needed to construct a facility would be more damaging to the environment and to public health than the equivalent emissions from a fossil fuel plant. While it is true that under the current energy system, fossil fuels are needed to produce solar panels, the increased lifetime of current solar panels more than makes up for this initial investment. Battery manufacturing, which accounts for 28% of the GHG emissions of solar utility construction [3], in no way indicates that solar utility manufacturing is unsustainable from a carbon standpoint. Provided that a solar utility is in operation for at least 3.8 years, it will become a net saver of GHG emissions. The lifetime emissions of any energy generated using solar will always be many times smaller than the equivalent power produced in a gas or coal-fired facility [4].
Additionally, there are many false claims about health and safety impacts of solar panels. RENEW Wisconsin clarifies this; “Panels are primarily made of glass, aluminum, copper, and other common materials. Solar projects also utilize steel racks to position panels, electrical cable and inverters and electric transformers to deliver power to the grid. All of this equipment is safe and contains the same materials that are found in household appliances. There are trace amounts of chemicals in solar panels that enable them to produce electricity. These compounds are completely sealed within the glass and coatings of the panels.” Additionally, “the collection and transmission lines used in these modern solar farm effectively prevent stray voltage. These lines are significantly different than what might be seen in local distribution systems or low-voltage wiring in sheds, barns, and dairy facilities.”
Beyond worries about the production phase of solar panels, many individuals also have questions about what happens at the end of these panels’ lives. The concern over end-of-life management of photovoltaic (solar) panels is quickly growing as the market for solar array installations inevitably widens to connect people world-wide to clean electricity. In 2020 solar panels accounted for 40% of new US electric generation capacity, and by 2050 the US is expected to have the second largest number of end-of-life panels in the world [5]. Solar waste regulations have been slow to establish in the US compared to leading policies in the European Union and Japan, entities which hold photovoltaic panel manufacturers and installers accountable for waste disposal and recycling efforts [6]. Issues related to end-of-life panels in the US should be resolved with regulations on e-waste, not by abandoning solar projects altogether.
It is true that certain solar panels have hazards. The two most common types of panels are crystalline silicon solar and thin-film solar [5]. A variety of metals are incorporated in the composition of glass at varying levels in both types of panels. Metals, such as lead and cadmium, at high concentrations are harmful to humans and the environment and considered toxic.. For this reason, the disposal of solar panels is federally regulated through the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Consequently, these regulations do encourage recycling of panels destined for hazardous waste disposal with proper oversight of materials handling thus keeping them out of landfills [5].
However, recycling of photovoltaic materials remains costly. Pulling out high-valued metals, such as silicon, silver, and copper, from solar glass poses a challenge and current practices are cost-prohibitive. Most often panels are stripped of aluminum frames and wire cables before being allocated to hazardous waste landfills [6]. Promising companies such as Recycle PV Solar have developed methods to safely reclaim 95% of the materials but without the benefit of recovering their costs at market resale. Developing methods to recover metals from glass is necessary for people to achieve cost-effective solar recycling. Yet, the push for these innovative solutions will be stronger when policy is set for manufacturers to assume responsibility for solar waste and to work collectively with joint ownership of recycling facilities [6]. According to both public and private science and industry leaders, a renewable-energy-circular-economy centered on materials reuse and recycling has advantages for business and economic growth.
An example of business opportunity and growth is seen in the end-of-life management of wind turbines. The majority of materials in wind turbines, such as steel, copper, and electronics, are easily recycled but the renewable energy industry is looking for sustainable solutions to the greater challenge of repurposing fiberglass turbine blades [7]. Global Fiberglass Solutions (GFS) is a start-up company investigating carbon-free methods for breaking down turbine blades and pressing them into pellets and fiberboards for new building materials. Although these blades are landfill safe, they currently require the expense of specialized cutting and transportation to few designated wide-open prairie disposal sites for burial. In the GFS model, blade recycling would occur on-site, thereby off-setting transportation and burial cost [7]. Given the large-scale demand for wind-generated electrical energy, the great demand for innovative materials recycling makes way for new industry leaders.
Regardless of whether solar energy is generated from small distributed and rooftop installments, accessed through shared community solar programs, or derived from utility-scale operations, end-of-life management of photovoltaics is critically important. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) aims to reduce the environmental impacts of solar energy and improve its affordability [8]. SETO funds highly sought-after research to improve solar materials and design for longevity, efficiency, and recyclable properties. The wide-spread adoption of solar energy demands collaboration from public and private science, business, and policy leaders. Only from this concerted effort may a renewable-energy-circular-economy form in the betterment of our lives and the environment.
Myth 4: We don’t need utility-scale solar.
Finally, some detractors of utility-scale solar have questioned if it is necessary in the first place. Why can’t we just rely on rooftop solar to provide energy?
Arguing for utility-scale solar, of course, does not make one against rooftop solar. In fact, wherever possible, rooftop solar should be used. Yet rooftop solar cannot produce all of the electricity that is needed. In order to decarbonize industrial processes and transport, we will need 3-4 times as much electricity on the grid as we currently consume [9]. Unfortunately, rooftops (commercial and residential) are simply not big enough to produce all of that power.
There is also a financial basis for why we cannot rely on mass installations of rooftop solar to provide our power. When the building is not owned by the occupant (renter) then there is an incentive problem. Industrial properties are frequently rented, and retail properties are almost always rented. The renter is not incentivized to make a long term capital investment in the property, and the owner is not directly incentivized to reduce the energy cost (as solar does) for the renter. Perhaps the market will develop where renters accurately account for operating costs along with rent and therefore accept higher rents when utility costs are lower, yet we cannot wait for this dramatic shift to happen and ignore utility-scale solar in the meantime.
As with all manufactured goods and most infrastructure projects, with larger scale comes lower unit cost. In other words, larger solar projects produce lower electricity unit costs. The shockingly low electricity costs from some recent solar projects (sometimes less than half the costs of currently operating fossil gas plants [10]) are only available from very large plants. Doubling the capacity of a solar project does not cause costs like design and permitting to double in tandem. In order to keep energy costs as low as possible, we need many large plants.
Certain technology that increases the efficiency of solar panels is only feasible at the utility-scale level. Solar trackers, the tiny machines that move solar panels throughout the day to ensure each panel is always oriented towards the sun, are typically not installed on smaller rooftop projects, since this technology would add a great deal of complexity to a system that produces relatively little energy [11]. But because solar trackers ensure that each panel produces more electricity, one acre of ground-mount solar produces significantly more electricity than one acre of rooftop solar that is often oriented sub-optimally.
Utility-scale solar comes with significant benefits both for achieving a green grid and the economic wellbeing of communities surrounding these projects. Solar companies should always work with community leaders to ensure that the concerns of local residents are heard in the process of deciding whether the project should proceed. People who have had past dealings with unscrupulous energy companies may have a right to be suspicious of new actors coming into town. Yet given the rich payoffs that solar power plants can yield, communities can surely come to an agreement with the companies for a solution that benefits the climate and allows new reinvestment in our rural lands.
References:
[1] https://www.freeingenergy.com/land-usage-comparison-solar-wind-hydro-coal-nuclear/
[2] https://www.freeingenergy.com/will-the-growth-of-solar-power-crowd-out-farmland/
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261922003403
[4] https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/LCA-2.pdf
[5] US EPA, OLEM. 2021. “End-of-Life Solar Panels: Regulations and Management.” Retrieved May 15, 2022
[6] Beetz, Eric Wesoff and Becky. 2020. “Solar Panel Recycling in the US — a Looming Issue That Could Harm Industry Growth and Reputation.” Pv Magazine USA. Retrieved April 24, 2022 (https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/12/03/solar-panel-recycling-in-the-us-a-looming-issue-that-could-harm-growth-and-reputation/).
[7] Anon. n.d. “Wind Turbine Blades Can’t Be Recycled, So They’re Piling Up in Landfills.” Pocket. Retrieved May 15, 2022 (https://getpocket.com/explore/item/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills).
[8] Anon. n.d. “End-of-Life Management for Solar Photovoltaics.” Energy.Gov. Retrieved April 24, 2022 (https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/end-life-management-solar-photovoltaics).
[9] https://www.rewiringamerica.org/policy/rewiring-america-handbook
[11] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2017/09/20/trackers-dominate-u-s-utility-scale-solar-wcharts/