Solar farms are good for desert environments… That is what we are being asked to believe in a new study coming out of China.
For context, China has a stranglehold on the world’s renewable energy construction and is responsible for mining and distributing at least 90+ per cent of the rare earths and other raw materials required in the industry. Many of these are sourced from Chinese territories, but increasingly, China has set up mines in third world nations or inside contested areas of water in the South China Sea. Renewable energy is becoming a geopolitical conversation as much as it is an environmental debate.
Confusingly, if you like to live in a world of logic and consistency, China is also operating a record number of coal-fired plants (1,161) and constructing the world’s largest oil and gas pipelines from neighbouring regions. Australia has 18 coal-fired plants left. Meanwhile, Beijing drowns coral reefs and atolls in concrete to make military bases while also claiming to pioneer ‘planet saving’ energy. As we used to say, ‘pick a lane’.
Most people would reasonably assume that the best thing for fragile desert environments is to stop touching them.
Leave no footprints, remember? That was the mantra of the 90s.
Whether it is a desert, a rainforest, or a marine park – humans should not be industrialising these areas for profit.
The problem for so-called green energy is that it is not looking particularly green. Renewable projects do not leave footprints, they stomp around leaving boot-prints on the natural world.
Locals are watching hundreds and sometimes thousands of acres of habitat squandered to accommodate infrastructure. Once the construction is finished, these areas are more-or-less lost to the wildlife that once inhabited them.
Destroying the planet to save it, as sceptics are quick to point out.
These complaints are not speculative. We have years of research documenting harm. One of the best case studies is California where the deserts are slowly being consumed by solar farms described as ‘photovoltaic seas’ whose mirages are so convincing that the illusion of frozen waves has led some tourists to go in search of places to launch their boats.
There are dozens of articles containing the testimonies of residents who have suffered medical and psychological conditions caused, they believe, by the approaching green utopia which has taken over their lives.
It is interesting to read comments underneath some of these articles, left by a self-described pro-renewables audience. Some ask why the desert ecosystem cannot ‘adapt to having shade’ or insist that articles that highlight the impact of solar should ‘be taken down’ before they ‘fall into the wrong hands’.
‘Truth’ in the wrong hands? I wonder what that means to these individuals if we were to draw a discussion out of them. We can see here why support for the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill has festered within certain ideological groups. Are they worried that too much exposure to the sunlight might melt their solar panels?
Regardless of whether green voters like to hear it or not, environmental scientists and organisations continue to harbour concerns. Nature acknowledges, ‘…the global climate pattern can also be disturbed by massive deployment of solar energy. This is attributed to the resultant changes in land surface properties.’
ScienceDirect wrote:
‘The construction of a PPP significantly alters the surface disturbance of the soil, affects the balance between the photosynthetically active radiation and radiant flux, reduces the surface albedo, changes the precipitation distribution, and forms a heat island effect. These changes critically impact the driving factors of the local microclimate, such as evaporation, wind speed, temperature, soil moisture, and soil temperature, on both temporal and spatial scales, thereby increasing the land degradation risk in fragile arid ecosystems … it is usually necessary to perform liberal applications of dust suppressant and water to clean the panels and prevent large amounts of dust or sand from affecting the PPP operation. These chemicals are extremely toxic to the environment and may cause extensive negative effects on the local ecological environment in the long run.’
EcoWatch warned earlier this year that a solar farm planned for the Mojave desert in California could result in the destruction of endangered desert tortoise habitat and the removal of Joshua trees. There was also concern that the construction process would stir up the sand and with it, release ‘valley fever’ pathogens into the air.
‘The clean energy project, which is expected to power 180,000 homes – with that power estimated to be for wealthy residents along the coast, the Los Angeles Times reported – could also have lasting impacts on the desert ecosystem.’
The company website insists:
‘While individual trees will be impacted during project construction, clean energy projects like Aratina directly address the existential threat of climate change caused by rising greenhouse gas emissions that threaten vastly more trees.’
The solar farm creators were quick to insist the carbon offset would be ‘equivalent to planting 14 million trees’ but residents are wondering why governments don’t simply plant those theoretical trees if they want to save the world. ‘More trees’ is what the average voter envisions when they vote for ‘green energy’ and yet green energy is deforesting the world.
Returning to the study out of China.
The study opens with the admission that solar farms have had ‘significant impacts on the ecological environment’ and proposes the establishment of an ‘indicator system to assess the ecological and environmental effects of photovoltaic development’.
In their case, they use Driving-Pressure-Status-Impact-Response (DPSIR) as a framework to measure various types of environmental impact.
Their solar farm is a 3,182MW project which takes up 64 square kilometres and has a stated lifespan between 20-30 years.
The introduction claims, ‘Overall, the large-scale development of desert photovoltaics in Gonghe Country has had a positive impact on the ecological environment.’ In this case, the elevated area is described as ‘alpine arid desert’ and ‘semiarid grassland’.
These tests returned various scores including ‘good’ and ‘poor’ but the long detail of the study remains ambiguous.
To take one example. The study talks about soil evaporation and water content beneath the panels.
‘The construction of these power stations has led to a reduction in soil evaporation, while the cleaning of photovoltaic panels has increased the water content of the soil located under the panels. The cleaning frequency of photovoltaic panels in this study is once a month, as a result, the growth conditions for vegetation indirectly improved. This has led to an increase in both vegetation species and biomass.’
And read this alongside some of the ‘poor’ responses.
‘The analysis indicated that the ecological environment still faces tremendous pressure, with lower scores for various indicators in the status layer and lower scores for onsite indicators such as fungal abundance and daily photosynthetic radiation than outside the zone. These results may result in more significant impacts in the future.’
Aside from the obvious question, ‘How many of these are weeds?’ We know from other studies that cleaning the panels isn’t neutral to the environment. The water itself could be a problem as water is a scarce resource in deserts – so where do the solar farms source these enormous quantities of water from? Which other environment is losing out to put a garden hose on a solar farm?
If we look at solar farms across China and around the world, grass in otherwise arid areas can grow better beneath the solar panels where it gets tall enough to obstruct sunlight to the panel. It then carries a fire risk when it dries out during the winter months. Sheep have been brought in to some parks to address this problem – except if you ask the climate zealots at the UN, they think sheep, like cows, are killing the planet. Are we getting rid of farm animals and going vegan, or expanding livestock to keep the solar panels safe?
Grazing might be sustainable for the duration of the farm’s short lifespan, but it only takes one grass fire running through the solar panels to render the entire operation a net-negative for the environment.
No matter what, the original desert landscape and its biology is gone.
Farmers make landscapes ‘greener’ with intensive farming as well – but you would not see a headline from environmental movements praising them for it in this ideological climate.
It is very difficult to argue that these projects preserve fragile ecosystems, rather, they change them – for better or worse is up to the customer to decide.
The study, meanwhile, concludes, ‘Photovoltaic development in desert areas has significantly improved local ecological and environmental conditions.’
Which sounds good on paper, until you open up a picture…
