> "government has a cool idea and mandates it by decree" This is not the government. It is in a law made by the parlement, aimed at accelerating the installati

> "government has a cool idea and mandates it by decree" This is not the government. It is in a law made by the parlement, aimed at accelerating the installation of renewable energy. > If all you want is solar capacity, wouldn't roofs be better because you don't need the support structures/lights? While not mandatory, there is already some heavy tax incentive to install solar panel on new buildings. While this is more challenging for housing, you will find that most warehouse are now built with solar panel on the roof. But retrofitting old warehouse, or any building really, with solar panel is more complicated has most of them don't have the structure to support the weight of the solar panel. > Is there some additional benefits of solar panels on parking lots that I'm missing, that requires government intervention to work? Not really but they tend to take a lot of area (compare to most urban building who are more vertical and have a lesser m2 footprint) so they are a good candidate to install solar panel. It also has the benefit of shading the car, reducing the power draw of the A/C when the car start in the summer (although it has the opposite effect in winter I suppose). But also, massive (80+ car park is considered quite big in France) parking are usually the beneficiary (and enabler) of a car centric culture, which create a lot of co2, so they should contribute.