A resident is quoted as saying "What was an oasis has become a little island in a dead solar sea" because a single solar facility was built whose edge is three miles away. The facility has a radius of about 1.5 miles.
The Guardian couldn't have interviewed anybody less sympathetic than these guys.
My next question naturally was how does that compare to a nuclear power plant? According to https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=104&t=3 : "The Prairie Island nuclear plant in Minnesota has two reactors, each with about 520 MW net summer generating capacity (the smallest reactors operating in the United States)"
Is solar going to be able to meet the demands placed on it with these various "x% by 2050" type goals? With electric vehicles consumption is only going up. Do we have enough land near the areas that demand the most power?
I never understood this complaint: if these projects are not done, orders of magintudes more of animal species disappear.
It seems that we can get a win-win by having PV solar do double duty as shade - putting solar up as shade above parking lots, on roofs where it shades the roof, or in places where the agriculture is compatible and shade has benefits (grazing land, some plants that already need shade), as that agriculture already disturbs the local flora and fauna.
All of these are like, either 100% mitigable or temporary.
Of slightly greater concern are impacts to local bird populations, who apparently fling themselves at the mirrors. This should be studied and we should figure out how to prevent it.
And the only major concern here seems to be the destruction of indigenous sites. Which shouldn't happen. Like, fuck any company that wants to roll into an indigenous site and pave over it. We can find other spots.
This just seems like a hit piece.