Solar farms ‘good’ for desert environments?
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…
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/solar-farms-good-for-desert-environments/
********************************************************Some Australian states are discovering what happens when they have too much rooftop solar
What a muddle!
When Victoria basks in mostly sunny spring weather this weekend, energy authorities will be monitoring how far electricity demand ebbs. If needed, they’ll turn off rooftop solar systems to ensure stability for the grid.
Such minimum system load events, as they are called, have emerged as a new challenge as households across Australia take advantage of plunging prices for solar panels to shield themselves from rising power bills and cut carbon emissions.
The Australian Energy Market Operator issued two such alerts for Victoria during the AFL grand final weekend a fortnight ago, and warned of two for this Saturday and Sunday.
Prior to this cluster, the state’s only previous warning was last 31 December.
The public has become inured to annual alerts to possible power shortfalls during summer heatwaves or extended cold snaps during winter.
It won’t be long before the obverse – a grid strained by too little demand – is common during mild, sunny spring and autumn days, when the need for cooling or heating abates, experts say.
“It’s all going to be uncomfortably interesting for energy system people,” said Tennant Reed, director of climate change and energy at the Ai Group, noting there are “emerging rules to keep the show on the road”.
Having a grid that is supplied entirely by renewable energy is something Aemo and state and federal governments have anticipated as they step up support for so-called consumer energy resources. Australian households have already embraced rooftop solar at a pace unmatched anywhere, with more than a third generating power at home.
Many options are available to source extra demand, such as encouraging people to use more of their generation at peak sunny periods, renewable advocates say.
Hot water heaters, now often operating at night, could be switched on during the day, while certain industrial users could be given incentives to increase production, much like they are now rewarded to power down during summer heatwaves.
Still, the looming challenges aren’t small, particularly as coal-fired power plants shut.
The grid’s system strength is “projected to decline sharply over the next decade”, Aemo said in its latest 2024 Electricity Statement of Opportunities report.
From October to December is likely to be when demand sinks to its lowest for most parts of the national electricity market. (The national electricity market or Nem serves all regions except Western Australia and the Northern Territory.)
Windy, sunny spring days – much like the coming weekend in Victoria – also mean an elevated supply of renewable energy in a season of minimal heating or cooling need.
A year ago, on 29 October, Nem grid demand hit a record minimum of about 11 gigawatts for 30 minutes. Small-scale solar, most of it on residential roofs, met 52% of underlying demand.
As more homes install solar, the Nem’s minimum demand may continue to shrink at the present rate of 1.2GW each year, Aemo said.
The Nem needs at least 4.3GW of electricity moving across its transmission network. If there are “unplanned network or unit outages”, the threshold rises to about 7GW – a level that may be breached as soon as next spring, Aemo said.
“While these periods of very high distributed PV levels relative to underlying demand are currently not frequent, they will increase over time and could occur during unusual events and outage conditions,” it said.
“A credible disturbance could lead to reliance on emergency frequency control schemes which are known to be compromised in such low operational demand periods, escalating risks of system collapse and blackouts.”
However, the market has a sizeable toolkit to address those risks. South Australia, where about half the homes have solar panels, already has coped with two minimum system load events of level 3 – the most serious – on 11 October 2020 and 14 March 2021.
For the latter, SA Power Networks, a company part-owned by the Hong Kong-based conglomerate Cheung Kong Infrastructure, was ordered to turn off 71 megawatts of photovoltaic systems. It was the first such intervention by Aemo.
So-called solar curtailment is now a feature of SA’s operating system even if such an intervention is meant to be a “last resort”, the network group said.
Before such action, large-scale solar and wind farms will be turned off, as will big solar systems on shopping centres and factories. Exports of surplus solar power from homes will also be halted before the systems themselves are turned off.
According to WattClarity, a leading energy data website, SA had at least eight such rooftop solar curtailments in 2022 and 2o23.
Victoria, which introduced similar “backstop” rules on 1 October this year, says consumers can do their bit. Solar curtailment should be authorities’ last move.
“We encourage households with solar panels to make the most of their clean energy and save on bills by using their solar power during the day – whether it’s charging electric vehicles, doing laundry or running dishwashers,” a Victorian government spokesperson said.
For Victoria, the backstop mechanism won’t affect a household’s ability to consume their own solar generation. Large batteries are part of the toolkit from this spring, with storage on standby to create additional demand by charging up.
New South Wales and Queensland are expected to face similar challenges in coming years. NSW, though, is yet to start public consultation on restrictions of solar exports, with minimum load issues not forecast until late 2025 or beyond.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/oct/12/australian-states-too-much-rooftop-solar
********************************************************Australian Greens accused of ‘extremism crisis’ after candidate James Cruz’s Hezbollah post
An ACT Greens candidate has been forced to issue a clarifying statement after a social media post in which he appeared to suggest Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah should be removed from Australia’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations.
James Cruz, Greens candidate for the seat of Kurrajong, came under fire after he said on X that “more and more” people were arguing that Hezbollah should be taken off the terror list, prompting Coalition calls for the Greens to address their “growing extremism crisis”.
Mr Cruz was replying to Guardian podcaster Nour Haydar, who suggested Jewish groups had led the charge for Hezbollah to be listed as a terrorist group.
Mr Cruz replied: “Remove Hezbollah from the list of terrorist organisations? You’re hearing it more and more.”
Amid a backlash over the post, Mr Cruz issued a statement saying he had only remarked that “other people have queried the listing”.
“Hezbollah is a listed terrorist organisation and the Greens are not arguing to change that,” Mr Cruz said. “I back that position of the Australian Greens.”
Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said it was “utterly extraordinary” that an endorsed Greens candidate believed the remarks were appropriate, calling on the left-wing party to dump Mr Cruz from its ticket.
“Hezbollah are proscribed in Australia and around the world for very good reason – they are terrorists,” he said.
“Over a four-decade reign of terror they’ve killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and even Argentina, where they blew up a Jewish community centre in 1995, killing 84 people.
“The Greens must address their growing extremism crisis and it should start with disendorsing James Cruz.”
During a recent wave of demonstrations marking one year since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, the Australian Federal Police targeted protesters displaying the Hezbollah flag, which is a prohibited symbol due to concerns it could ignite violence.
The furore over Mr Cruz’s post came just a week out from the October 19 ACT election, which will see Chief Minister Andrew Barr pitch for another term after 23 years of Labor government.
ACT Greens leader Shane Rattenbury said the comments raised a “sensitive and complicated issue”, but declined to comment further.
Greens sources told The Weekend Australian Mr Cruz’s X account had recently been hacked and deleted by a third party.
Conservative group Advance accused the Greens of “standing with Hezbollah and Hamas at protests”, rather than acting as a “party of environmentalists”.
“Not only do they stand with Hezbollah and Hamas at protests, they float changes to how those barbaric organisations are treated by our national security apparatuses,” spokeswoman Sandra Bourke
“The Greens aren’t who they used to be, and more and more Australians are seeing it as the Greens show their true colours.”
The stoush followed federal Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi’s refusal to declare Hamas should be dismantled.
Mr Cruz’s comments surfaced the day after revelations came to light that ACT Greens candidate Harini Rangarajan had reportedly written a blog post comparing 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden to Jesus Christ.
“I’ve gone on to idolise several other martyrs – Bhagat Singh, Husayn ibn Ali, Guru Tegh Bahadur, Che Guevara, Jesus Christ, Balachandran Prabhakaran, Joan of Arc, Osama bin Laden, etc,” her post reportedly said.
In his pitch to voters Mr Cruz said he was drawn to run for the Greens because of the party’s commitment to end homelessness and its recognition of housing as a fundamental human right.
“Growing up in poverty and living in public housing showed me the urgent need for a society that addresses inequality and the growing housing crisis,” he said.
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Greens Declare War on Growing Greens
Grow your own fruit and veg – and destroy the planet. Allotment produce, much prized by proud food-growing citizens the world over, has six times the ‘carbon’ footprint of conventional agriculture, according to a recent paper published by Nature. “Steps must be taken to ensure that urban agriculture supports, and does not undermine, urban decarbonisation efforts,” demand the authors. What have these people been smoking? Surely not some of the puff circulating at the recent Psychedelic Climate Week in New York. Highlights included a discussion on funding ketamine-assisted therapy and a panel on ‘Balancing Investing and Impact with Climate and Psychedelic Capital’.
The lead authors of the Nature paper are academics working out of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. They suggest using urban farms as sites for “education, leisure and community building”. Perhaps the locals could sit cross-legged and listen to early Pink Floyd music. Maybe clap the setting sun to some Atom Heart Mother. Excuse your correspondent if he cannot take this paper seriously. It is a classic example of greens picking on a human activity – almost any will do – and complaining that it causes the devil-gas carbon dioxide to be released. At the recent New York climate happening, according to the Guardian, revellers were told that using hallucinogens can spark “consciousness shifts” to inspire climate-friendly behaviour. What climate friendly behaviour, one might ask, given that almost anything humans do to improve their lot of Earth is demonised by an increasingly weird millenarian green cult.
The authors of the Nature paper seem to have a particular down on home composting. Poorly-managed composting is said to exacerbate the release of greenhouse gases (GHGs). “The carbon footprint of compost grows tenfold when methane-generated anaerobic conditions persist in compost piles,” it says. This is particularly common during small-scale composting, apparently. With a seeming complete ignorance of how small allotments farming functions, the authors suggest that “cities can offset this risk by centralising compost operations for professional management”.
Wherever these cultists look, there are gases being released that are contributing to their invented existential climate crisis. The high application rates of compost in urban agriculture can also lead to nitrous oxide, we’re told. Needless to say, “strategic management of application scheduling and fertiliser combinations may be required to minimise emissions”.
For allotment holders, few pleasures in life compare with a break from arduous work and a hot cup of tea in the shed. Surrounded by the tools of the trade, it is the labourer’s equivalent of passing around a few liveners at National Climate Week, with the added attraction that it doesn’t turn you into a self-important dope. But such pleasure will come to an end if the climate cops have their way. Infrastructure, we’re told, is the largest driver of carbon emissions at what are termed “low-tech” urban agricultural sites. As well as sheds, this includes beds (for vegetables, not a crash pad for ketamine heads) and compost facilities. A raised bed built and used for five years will have approximately four times the environmental impact as one used for 20. Other infrastructure supplies are said to include fertiliser, gasoline and weed block textile.
Plants need water, but only the right sort of water can help save the planet. In their site samples, the researchers found that most allotment-holders use potable municipal water sources or groundwater wells. Big no, no, of course, since such irrigation emits GHGs from pumping, water treatment and distribution. “Cities should support low-carbon (and drought-conscious) irrigation for urban agriculture via subsidies for rainwater catchment infrastructure, or through established guidelines for greywater use,” it is suggested. Presumably, the subsidies will come from the magic bread tree and the infrastructure will be of the special type that does not produce GHGs.
This crackpot climate paper is just the latest sign that the green movement is riven with disagreements as its climate crisis grift starts to fall apart in the face of reality. There are no realistic back-ups for intermittent wind and solar, while carbon capture is a colossal and potentially dangerous waste of money. Without hydrocarbon use, humankind is doomed. Billions will die and society will be returned to the dark ages. Hydrocarbons are ubiquitous in modern society, and so almost everything that humans do to survive and thrive on a dangerous planet can be demonised. Eventually, you end up with Sir David Attenborough making the appalling observation that it was “barmy” for the United Nations to send bags of flour to famine-stricken Ethiopia. Or to read earlier this year the tweet from the United Nations contributing author and UCL professor Bill McGuire that the only “realistic way” to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown was to cull the human population with a high fatality pandemic.
Many green extremists seem to take the view that anything humans do, including growing their own veg, is causing existential harm to the planet. What they really hate, some may conclude, are humans themselves. Treble bongs all round.
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/10/14/greens-declare-war-on-growing-greens/
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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