Photos: The Scale of China’s Solar-Power Projects
Photos: The Scale of China’s Solar-Power Projects
www.theatlantic.com
Photos: The Scale of China’s Solar-Power Projects
18 comments
-
-
Not sure if that thumbnail pic is China or Mirrodin
-
Those photos don’t seem great for the environment.
-
There's actually research that shows that farming under solar cover increases moisture retention and the crop yields of certain plants. You'll also note that a lot of these installations are on marginal land- steep hillsides, arid land, and even floating on reservoirs. The latter slows the rate of evaporation from the reservoir as well, so it has a net environmental benefit.
You're right though, not every installation is perfect. But we seldom ask these same questions when it's a new housing development or a Walmart with a moat of paved parking around it.
-
The impact of our incessant growth continuously erodes the environment, wiping out ecosystems for development and depleting our finite materials. Our growth mindset excuses ourselves of the "lesser evil" of renewable energy.
Indeed this isn't great for the environment and I'm again disappointed about this community's shortsightedness in refusing to see it that way.
-
This message was sponsored by big oil.
-
Nothing people do has zero impact. But pretty much everything else has a bigger one. Coal will utterly destroy the land, and the gases emitted after it burns will destroy far more.
Solar like this on a few percent of the land will supply all the electricity people need. So it looks huge, but is surprisingly low-impact compared with other options, or things like raising cattle
-
So... I considered trying to start an energy-sustainable data center...
The math doesn't check out. One square meter of earth gets about 1,000 watts from sunlight. Our current solar panels only run at 20% efficiency at best. Servers I looked at average 500 watts... and we usually put a bunch of servers stacked up in a single rack, which you can only fit one of in one square meter.
As AI grows, it's only gonna get worse. We need nuclear or geothermal or hell, fusion if we can make it not 50 years away.
But it explains why Amazon and such are looking into smaller scale nuclear. Let's see how that goes I guess...
Edit: I'm not saying solar is a bad idea. We just need more energy production of many sorts
-
I guess the lesser of two evils is better than doing nothing.
-
-
Tired of you people bitching about how the only large scale non-nuclear solution to our problem isn't "great for the environment" when it's the ONE thing that isn't actually destroying the planet. Can't have anything less than 100% magical perfection, nobody will ever please you.
-
Tbh it’s better than strip mining or coal power plants.
And in extremely hot areas, planting crops under solar arrays is a great idea, and can help more sensitive crops survive in areas where they’d otherwise get baked to death.
-
-
18 comments
At this scale, a geosynchronous solar power satellite beaming down power as microwaves actually seems chapter and more reasonable.
You know, other than the single point of failure in space part. I guess it's a bad decade for that idea.