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Whatever. You can stop mountain removal mining for coal, and prevent environmentally sensitive land from being devastated for solar farms. Its not an either/or,
by jonnycomputer 5y ago
Whatever. You can stop mountain removal mining for coal, and prevent environmentally sensitive land from being devastated for solar farms. Its not an either/or, since there is, in fact, plenty of other land that can be used for solar farms.
- danans 5y ago> there is, in fact, plenty of other land that can be used for solar farms. If such land were available at an equivalent price to the hillside in question, why would anyone clear a hillside to install solar? All else equal, it's strictly more work/expense to build a solar farm on an incline. The price for the "other land" must not be right, or must have some other serious disadvantage.
- jonnycomputer 5y agoWell, clearing the trees is already a profitable opportunity, if that is what happened. But my guess is we are talking about the idiosyncratic decisions of one landowner. Who knows if they did any kind of serious cost-benefit analysis. Or were you assuming that a solar company bought the land specifically to install solar. Possibly, but that's hardly clear to me. Besides, in the mountains, wind is probably the better bet. Now .. putting solar farms on top of already strip mined mountains makes sense to me. You've already flattened them, and farming is of the question. And it ... looks like that is happening. Tjough I don't know how the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act plays into that.