Appropriate Use of Solar

[catherine]

I'm posting this video by my permaculture teacher. When it comes to solar, I agree with many radical environmentalists/conservationists in that making solar/wind The Answer is simplistic. There are a lot of reasons NOT to go whole hog on solar/wind and other renewable energies. But there is "appropriate use." I like this video because it clearly outlines what that is. I think the bottom line is, choosing renewable resources is not a one-size-fits-all Wonder Technology. In reality, the "wonder technology" could be a "system" of energy that is right for specific uses, and each person has to determine the right mix of solar and other energy sources for their situation.

I am against the idea of cutting down acres of trees for solar farms without considering all the ramifications of use vs environmental impact. I certainly am considering solar for my home, but I'm going into it gingerly. This video helps give me some direction for my thoughts.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSEGvb5Yh-A

[jp1]

Thank you for sharing this! Back in the 80's when I was a teen I was fascinated by solar and read every book the denver library system had on the subject. This six minute video is basically a very brief synopsis of what all those books said. At the time photovoltaic panels were quite pricey so the books all focused on solar heat and hot water, as well as the importance of making one's home as efficient as possible to minimize energy needs, and only discussed solar electric in the context of off grid homes where connecting to the grid would be extremely expensive because the home was seriously remote. Today photovoltaic is much cheaper but still not cheap enough to justify use for heating water and space heating. Those can still more cost effectively be done by thermal solar, at least if one has space to store the heat in some way.

SO and I have been discussing solar and one of these days I will get someone to come out and look at our house to see how practical it is. We get a limited amount of sun in the winter but we have hours and hours of abundant sun in the summer time so it will hopefully make sense financially.

[happystuff]

Nice and very easy to understand for the layperson - me! Thanks for posting this.

[catherine]

Andrew just posted a podcast episode how his town is making misguided decisions on the use of solar. They are calling land with good soil that can be used for food farms "idle" and assigning it to solar industries to use for solar farms..

I'm not posting the link because it's really an issue specific to his area, but if you're interested I can link it.

As I've said before, it is absolutely crazy to cut down trees so solar farms can be installed. Some of this craziness may be attributed to ignorance or lack of real thinking about the right solutions for the right problems. Or it can be attributed to green industry who, biased by the profit motive, pitch their solution to towns and cities. If you're a hammer, everything is a nail.

Take a look at the planned destruction of nature and biodiversity in the name of "environmentalism":

Soon to be bulldozed for industrial solar:
Aratina Solar, CA 2,400 acres - 4,200 Joshua trees
Oberon Solar, CA, 2,700 acres - ancient desert ironwoods destroyed
Gemini Solar, NV, 7,100 acres - over 1,000 desert tortoises
Yellow Pine Solar, Nevada, 3,000 acres - over 90,000 Mojave yuccas

Just venting. This makes me upset.

[ApatheticNoMore]

But it isn't really clear what the answer is is it really? I mean it's really NOT clear to me.

So we take this:
Soon to be bulldozed for industrial solar:
Aratina Solar, CA 2,400 acres - 4,200 Joshua trees

But Joshua trees are dying due to climate change as well. And no bulldozing them for solar won't stop climate change (ahem baked in). But they might die from climate change, even minus being bulldozed, as well as will many other species. The main problem with solar IMO is it being added on top of fossil fuel use but fossil fuel use is NOT being stopped. It's not even declining. Some don't like that climate change has swallowed the environmental discourse, but it is that huge a factor not just in discourse but eh reality. And spring and summer will come and the west will burn again like every year for the rest of our lives until there is nothing left to burn.

And I could rant about biodiversity being destroyed in the name of environmentalism, but I don't know is that a productive use of my time, when it's just as readily destroyed for new housing developments? (and that I have objected to, but it really doesn't matter)

[catherine]

But it isn't really clear what the answer is is it really? I mean it's really NOT clear to me.

So we take this:
Soon to be bulldozed for industrial solar:
Aratina Solar, CA 2,400 acres - 4,200 Joshua trees

But Joshua trees are dying due to climate change as well. And no bulldozing them for solar won't stop climate change (ahem baked in). But they might die from climate change even minus being bulldozed as well as will many other species as well. The main problem with solar IMO is it being added on top of fossil fuel use but fossil fuel use is NOT being stopped. Some don't like that climate change has swallowed the environmental discourse, but it is that huge a factor not just in discourse but eh reality. And spring and summer will come and the west will burn again like every year for the rest of our lives until there is nothing left to burn.

I agree. But actively destroying the landscape isn't going to help.


The main problem with solar IMO is it being added on top of fossil fuel use but fossil fuel use is NOT being stopped.

Bright Green Lies talks about Jevon's Paradox, which is the heart of the problem of the "race to the top" of green industry:


In economics, the Jevons paradox (/ˈdʒɛvənz/; sometimes Jevons' effect) occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the rate of consumption of that resource rises due to increasing demand.[1] The Jevons paradox is perhaps the most widely known paradox in environmental economics.[2] However, governments and environmentalists generally assume that efficiency gains will lower resource consumption, ignoring the possibility of the paradox arising.[3].

This is a quote from Wikipedia, not Bright Green Lies.

[ApatheticNoMore]

It seems clear to me that fossil fuel use needs to be curtailed at the supply side, not the demand side, and not by expecting clean sources to automatically replace fossil fuels (although sure develop clean alternatives, that's fine but not sufficient). The demand side is L.E.D. lightbulbs, electric cars etc. - all somewhat ok but ... it's not reducing fossil fuel use either. And all this focus on it is obfuscation. I mean all that technology might allow poeople to live better without fossil fuels, so it could be part of the solution, but if fossil fuels are not curtailed then it's no solution at all.

Basically stop (or wind down) offshore and onshore drilling, fracking, coal etc. - stop the supply. But the solar panels in the dessert, I don't know, they have costs and benefits, it's not so clear.

[Rogar]

My utilities service provider offers an option for my electricity to come from wind power. I pay a slight premium and it's no doubt some sort of book juggling vs. actually having wind power direct to my home. That said, I'm not certain that the wind turbines that dot the landscapes on ridgelines all over the west are an less egregious to the aesthetics of landscapes than solar farms. There doesn't seem to be an perfect renewable energy. I would just suspect that the solar farms proposed or built over valuable forest land would probably require some form of remediation by revegetating other areas or purchasing other types of carbon off-sets. Which may be like sinning an going to confession, but it's not nothing.

My home town has also been known as the Pittsburgh of the west due to it's steel production. The mill has sized down is recent years, but still produces rail, wire, beams, etc. Just recently they've announced that most of their energy use is now transitioned from coal to solar. To me, that is rather incredible considering the high energy use of production. They have their own solar farm on a bit of prairie that has fairly low alternate uses and is pretty much barren.

The common sources I've seen that identify the top culprits for greenhouse emissions are agriculture, building heating, and transportation. My humble opinion is that we can't expect green energy solutions to get us to carbon emission goals with out changes and sacrifices in life styles. Each of those three has significant energy savings opportunities at the personal level, but as they say, recycling Styrofoam cups, Prius, and shorter showers isn't going to get us there. My optimism for people making any significant lifestyle changes is not very high.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I buy the green power option from the electrical utility too, that is my green power decision. I like to think it encourages green energy.

[Tradd]

Rogar, you talk about lifestyle choices needing to change. Do you want to force people to leave the suburbs and into cities? Public transit doesn’t work well for people who have to commute suburb to suburb as many of us do.

[catherine]

Rogar, you talk about lifestyle choices needing to change. Do you want to force people to leave the suburbs and into cities? Public transit doesn’t work well for people who have to commute suburb to suburb as many of us do.

I would say that there are other solutions for people who want to live outside of cities. Look at The Netherlands--they have fantastic mass transportation and other infrastructure that uses far less energy. They are famous bicycle riders--you see people riding everywhere in the suburbs of Amsterdam to get places for shopping and services, but the towns are built for people to be able to bicycle places--people aren't taking their lives in their hands when they get on a bike, as they are in many places here.

Also, lifestyle change can involve building homes and designing landscapes in more eco-friendly ways.

But I agree with Rogar that the idea that people will make any changes necessary to get to net-zero carbon seems hopeless at this point, but you never know. Lifestyle change can include consuming less, consuming local, returning to older values less waste, and being happy with less seems like the impossible dream.

Tradd, you are already living simply, but most don't share your values.

[Rogar]

Rogar, you talk about lifestyle choices needing to change. Do you want to force people to leave the suburbs and into cities? Public transit doesn’t work well for people who have to commute suburb to suburb as many of us do.

I don't see that forcing people to do such a thing would go over well or at all. I intentionally chose to live close to work where I could bicycle in many of the days. In my last move I took a map and compass and drew a circle around my workplace that was my limit for a cycling distance and thus potential homes. I understand that is not possible or practical for some, but it would be nice to have incentives for public transportation, car pooling, work from home, etc. There is a broad area of opportunity for city planning that is not my area of knowledge. Maybe someone else has a better answer. I think strong arming people is unlikely to have a good result.

[JaneV2.0]

Aggressive adoption of work from home options would certainly help.

[Rogar]

I have a couple of friends who have roof top solar and would argue a case that that is better than solar or wind farms. I'm not sure how the economies if scale work out for that but I think part of the argument revolves around not overloading the aging electrical grid or replacing valued landscapes. I have considered it and am not quite past it yet since I have idea sun exposure, but for my humble 50's home it sort of feels like the old putting lipstick on a pig. It seems like the payback period is still in the 8-10 year range plus any increase in property value, as much as any of that might be important. Plus it might be a bit of a legacy to the next owner some day.

So far I've put money into new windows and insulation, which seems like an easier start and possibly money better spent.

One of them I refer to as my millionaire next door. They have retrofitted floors in their main living space with radiant electrical heat. And also modified their home power supply so they can quick charge their Tesla in their garage. That alone cost $5,000. Not exactly following the advice in the OP and I have wondered how much electricity they end up buying from the utility provider. The OP guy was living off grid where I think the advice might be a little different.

[catherine]

I think rooftop solar is great. We have very good southern exposure and we have to replace our roof next year, or at least repair it and for me that's the opportunity to consider installing solar panels. In addition, I'm playing around with the cost vs benefit of doing a minimal retrofit of the southern side to maximize passive solar. I have a southwesterly room (my office/guest room) that gets incredibly hot in the summer and is decent in the winter, so I'm thinking of exploring how to leverage that heat--specifically by replacing the wood floors in that room with something that would provide thermal mass, and seeing how much it would cost to install some type of fan/blower to push that heat into the other rooms. I have to look into how effective that would be at saving energy.

For the warm months, I need to install awnings/canopies to reduce the heat. Just a thought. In reality, I'll probably just try to upgrade my electric baseboard heat.

[Tradd]

When I was in Ontario twice in 2019, I saw lots of rural homes with a large solar panel mounted on a pole that rotated so it could get the best sun. Pretty much mounted as a satellite dish would be, but on the ground in the yard.

[JaneV2.0]

If I wanted to stay here (and remove a few trees), I'd have a nice southern exposure via my garage roof. I really like the idea of rooftop solar.

[razz]

Aggressive adoption of work from home options would certainly help.

I read an article in early 2021 about the work from home issue. The author cautioned that work from home can be very easily offshored by a company seeking to reduce employment wages, expenses for digital services and expand their horizons to new markets. Local sustained employment is not guaranteed.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I find the idea of scaring us away from work from home due to offshoring ridiculous.

Like offshoring has been going on for like 20 years. Everyone who wanted to offshore my work could, there was no magic preventing anyone from doing so prior to the pandemic. I think there is sometimes some quality compromise there, so offshoring is not always a win, but it's an option.

But nice old boss likes to see your face and so won't offshore as long as they can see your pretty face. Ok, MAYBE ... in some situations. But if that's what we are counting on to prevent offshoring, well good luck with that, because that's pretty weak tea.

I've never understood, what about the office, did people think prevented offshoring before, but now makes it possible. Just custom and habit? Maybe, but then how much of that, if it existed, has already died from the pandemic anyway. Lack of VPN setup, well that was setup quickly in a pandemic and so is kind of a done deal it seems to me. And I don't think anyone really argue that noone knew offshoring existing before, but now they do. I mean maybe if they lived under a rock I guess.

[JaneV2.0]

So as long as everyone pretends workers have to put in an appearance in an office, they're immune to offshoring? I'm doubtful.

[sweetana3]

My employer was a good case on point. So long as our computer systems required regional actions, the employment was regional. As each type of work could be done anywhere in the US, employment was centralized with employees laid off at the original spot. Did not require the same number of employees since duplicate work was removed.

I always used to tell people (since the 1990s) that if our work was able to be done anywhere, watch out as it could be sent to Puerto Rico, for example.

As I retired in 2007, I saw the centralization taking place starting with high level work. This was good in some ways since having 9 different sites doing one job meant training and supervision at each site and a variety of quality issues.

My job was secure since Congressional offices liked having a Taxpayer Advocate in each state for personal service. Do not know what happened after 2007 or after pandemic issues.

[Rogar]

I wonder how the concept of cities would change if significant numbers switched from office work to work from home. At one time not too long ago vacancy rates in NYC offices was really big. Maybe it's back to normal now? I've always thought that the best city design would be a number of satellite small cities clustered together rather than the one major city and then the burbs. I suppose then it cold just be urban sprawl.

[ApatheticNoMore]

If a fundamental characteristic of the work changed so that it wasn't able to be done everywhere and now it can then I guess so.

The thing is though, a great deal of work ALWAYS could have been done anywhere including from home, but was done at the office prior to the pandemic. So *nothing* in the *ability* to do work anywhere has changed (except maybe better VPN and a few remote communication tools and support and that is a very minor thing I'd think in terms of the overall expenses and labor in a business - but feel free to argue otherwise).

So if that is no big thing, the argument seems to amount to your job is going to be outsourced because they can't see your pretty face or something. Well maybe, but we've seen outsourcing going on for 20 years or so anyway, so it's really more like put in face time because we want those butts in chairs, and p.s. your job can still be outsourced.

[Rogar]

The thing is though, a great deal of work ALWAYS could have been done anywhere including from home, but was done at the office prior to the pandemic. So *nothing* in the *ability* to do work anywhere has changed (except maybe better VPN and a few remote communication tools and support and that is a very minor thing I'd think in terms of the overall expenses and labor in a business - but feel free to argue otherwise).

I'm not sure of the ALWAYS time line. Our big city center offices spaces are probably a carry over from times before digital advances, like say online banking or Zoom meetings as example. Since my work could never have been done from home I may not understand certain necessities, but office work seems always to involve hierarchies and teams that involve communications, presentations, client interactions, etc. that require recent digital tools. Of course at some time we actually made things here and manufacturing could never could be done at home.

Looking back is sort of a mute question regardless, since we are where we're at now. It just seems like it could work better in the future.