5 things you need to know about solar
1. Industrial-scale solar power plants on rural land negatively impact our ecosystem and contribute to climate change.
Industrial-scale solar on agricultural land puts pressure on farming and food supply.
It isn’t “green” to cut down thousands of acres of trees to build large solar plants. Trees remove carbon from the atmosphere and slow global warming. Deforestation contributes to climate change.
2. Industrial-scale solar development is driven by
Big Tech demand and subsidized federal tax credits.
Big Tech companies buy RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates) and claim their companies are powered 100% by renewables, while still being connected to electric grids that use fossil fuels. In reality, only a fraction of each company’s energy comes directly from solar or wind installations.
Lucrative federal tax credits and subsidies, paid by US taxpayers, incentivize the solar industry to build solar power plants. These incentives add cost and harm reliability.
3. Solar energy produces large amounts of toxic waste.
Solar waste is toxic. You thought the plastic landfills were bad; you wait for solar waste landfills. With current plans, the IRENA (International Renewable Energy Agency) calculates that by 2050 the disposal of worn out solar panels will constitute over double (x2) the tonnage of all of today’s global plastic waste.
4. Solar Energy is unreliable.
Solar panels do not produce electricity when it is dark or in bad weather. This makes solar unreliable and solar plants require 100% back up all the time by fossil fuels. Battery technology doesn't exist to store even 1 day of energy in the USA.
5. Solar Energy is NOT clean or free from CO2 emissions.
The sun is free, but harnessing the sun’s power into usable energy requires industrial processes to make cement, steel, glass and other components. These processes emit CO2. If your motive is to protect the environment, you might want to rethink wind, solar, and batteries because, like all machines, they're built from nonrenewable materials. Where’s all this stuff going to come from? Massive new mining operations, destroying more land that should be protected, and in places hostile to the U.S.