Negligible Benefits Of Solar Don’t Outweigh The Destruction It Causes

Written by James Freeman on February 6, 2024. Posted in Current News

Taxpayers and utility customers naturally expect to pay heavily for wind and solar power. After all, if such projects made economic sense, there would be no need for governments to subsidize and mandate them.

But even beyond the costs of inefficient power production, there’s a question of whether alternative-energy cheerleaders yet have a handle on the environmental impact of their projects.

It seems that there is still no free lunch and that every method of producing electricity carries costs and benefits.

For example, a solar farm often requires the removal of large swathes of vegetation, which naturally carries a local consequence—and not just for the wildlife who used to live there.

Stephen Peterson reports for the Sun Chronicle from Plainville, Mass.:

Numerous homes in town have for months been seeing their yards and basements flooded by rainwater flowing down a hill from land where a solar farm is being built…

The flooding has been going on since last summer after trees were cleared from the site to make way for the solar panels.

Mr. Peterson describes a recent meeting of the town planning board at which residents described the new deluge in homes that previously had not had a history of flooding:

A tearful Karen Host of Berry Street said about three feet of water flooded the finished basement of her home and the damage isn’t being covered by insurance.

The fire department had to pump out her basement, and firefighters returned a few days later for their hoses and pumps and water was still pouring out, it was noted…

“My backyard was a swimming pool,” she said, adding she expected more basement flooding from Wednesday’s rain…

Gary Lewicki of Berry Street said his pump couldn’t keep up with the water. “I’ve had enough,” Lewicki said, adding he is facing cleanup bills and taking time out of work. “It was a waterfall, Niagara Falls.”

The Sun Chronicle also quoted another resident who offered a succinct diagnosis of the problem:

Steven Rose of Berry Street said he had to dig a ditch to divert water in pouring rain. “It’s a health issue. You’re going to have mold problems. People are going to get sick.”

“You can’t take down that many trees,” Rose said, explaining they had acted like a sponge for rainwater.

Fair point, Mr. Rose.

What’s happening in Plainville is not going to happen to everybody who lives near a solar farm. But even if it’s a small risk, one would hope that on the other side of the equation would be cheap, reliable power.

But we’re talking about solar energy. In 2022 Greg Moran reported for the San Diego Union-Tribune:

A San Diego Superior Court jury awarded two landowners in Valley Center $6.5 million in damages they suffered from the construction of a solar farm on adjacent property, which altered the landscape and caused flooding damage to their land.

Every new energy project brings some sort of environmental footprint, and some are muddier than others. A recent press release from the federal Environmental Protection Agency states:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Justice Department today announced that Swinerton Builders has agreed to pay a $2.3 million penalty – divided between the United States, Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM), and the State of Illinois – to resolve allegations that it violated the Clean Water Act and related state laws during the construction of solar farms in Alabama, Idaho, and Illinois.

The company has also agreed to undertake mitigation actions to help restore the Portneuf River in Idaho and to purchase stream credits to improve the watershed surrounding the Alabama site.

The states of Alabama and Illinois joined the United States in the settlement.

One might dismiss all such stories as anecdotal.

But the hard reality explained by the late, great Peter Huber of the Manhattan Institute is that because sunlight at 93 million miles is not particularly intense compared, for example, to what one finds in a barrel of oil, large-scale solar production naturally will demand an enormous geographical footprint.

That lack of intensity also explains why, despite decades of political favoritism, solar power just can’t quite seem to reach economic viability.

Opting for rooftop panels instead of huge, vegetation-clearing solar farms doesn’t seem to make the economics work, either. A recent Journal editorial noted:

California’s rooftop solar industry has benefited for years from government subsidies that offset homeowner and business installation costs. The state mandates rooftop solar on new homes, and a state net metering program rebates homeowners for excess power that they generate and remit to the grid.

The rebate for many years was up to two to three times more than the wholesale price of electricity…

Enter energy reality. In December 2022, the state Public Utilities Commission voted to reduce compensation for excess solar power sent to the grid by about 75 percent for new rooftop customers to match the value of their exported electricity to the grid… the subsidy taper is causing withdrawal pains.

Despite the Inflation Reduction Act’s sweetened solar subsidies, California’s solar and storage industry claims that the state subsidy decline cost 17,000 jobs last year as installation applications fell by 80 percent.

Solar Insure recently told pv magazine USA that 75 percent of solar installers are at “high-risk” of failing. “We have seen a wave of recent solar installer bankruptcies,” said Solar Insure CEO Ara Agopian.

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