[HN Gopher] US government opens 22M acres of federal lands to solar
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US government opens 22M acres of federal lands to solar
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 120 points
Date : 2024-01-19 20:24 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (electrek.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (electrek.co)
| megaman821 wrote:
| Are these lands pre-cleared for building, no additional
| environmental review? Can they also pre-clear transmission
| corridors to connect these solar panels to the grid, no
| additional environmental review and a promise to exercise
| imminent domain?
| beaeglebeached wrote:
| I wonder if they could put some energy dense industry out there
| so they don't have to transmit it.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| You would need transport infrastructure for the goods then.
| How many places have transport with no power infrastructure?
|
| Roads are also generally worse for the environment than
| transmission lines.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Load centers aren't too far, and transmission is reasonably
| close. You can build transmission in parallel to generation
| facilities, versus serial order of operations.
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=27152
|
| https://atlas.eia.gov/apps/all-energy-infrastructure-and-
| res...
|
| https://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/fedmaps::u-s-electric-
| power-...
| trhway wrote:
| Bitcoin or training&inference farms, so you'd need only an
| internet fiber (or even just wireless/satellite) connection.
| floatrock wrote:
| from the article:
|
| > The updated roadmap... focuses on lands within 10 miles of
| existing or planned transmission lines and moves away from
| lands with sensitive resources.
| megaman821 wrote:
| That is nice, but we all know that does nothing to stop a
| decade or more of lawsuits. The Government could preempt all
| those lawsuits now by pre-clearing the areas so they can
| start building as soon as possible.
| barney54 wrote:
| Congress could preempt those laws, but the administration
| itself cannot. They can expedite permitting, but there will
| still be lawsuits.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| They probably couldn't feasibly pre-clear this amount of
| land even if they wanted to. There are almost certainly
| resources (e.g. human remains and cultural sites) somewhere
| in that area that not only does the BLM not have authority
| over, but for which the existing legislation is basically
| Congress saying "Not within in our authority".
| serial_dev wrote:
| I was very confused about Black Lives Matter's role
| here... BLM in this context refers to bBureau of Land
| Management.
| glenstein wrote:
| Being able to challenge the construction of transmission
| lines is a good thing, not a bad thing. The largest
| unfragmented forest east of the Mississippi was just carved
| in half by a new transmission line in Maine, when there
| were alternative options that would not have done so. It
| just so happened that the most environmentally harmful
| option was nevertheless the most profitable, so they rammed
| it through.
|
| And while I don't like the outcome, I like that we had the
| ability to challenge it. An under-appreciated aspect of
| corridor construction has been utilities being able to use
| state level regulatory capture to ram through projects that
| contribute to forest fragmentation.
|
| Being able to challenge these for legitimate purposes has
| to be balanced against the equally legitimate problem of
| NIMBY obstructionism of corridor construction. But my
| feeling is that utilities aren't interested in a balance,
| they are interested pushing the NIMBY narrative to achieve
| a complete blank checks to circumvent environmental reviews
| altogether.
| megaman821 wrote:
| I don't want to ram through anything and everything, but
| why not have the BLM conduct studies now? They can pick
| the most promising, lowest environment footprint
| corridors. If a pre-approved corridor works, use it, if
| not go through the normal process.
| edgyquant wrote:
| How realistic is it to build and maintain these in a desert? When
| discussing doing this in the Sahara, there were lots of people
| claiming that the sand would make maintaining them costly and
| that at large scales them blocking the sun can actually effect
| the local climate as it cools the ground and allows rainwater to
| pool.
| burkaman wrote:
| There's already a lot in the desert: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Solar_power_plants_in_the_Moja.... I think maintenance is
| easier than a hypothetical Sahara megafarm because in the US we
| can still build them near existing transmission and roads.
|
| They definitely do affect the local climate, and at a very
| large scale they can hypothetically change the albedo of the
| desert enough to affect global weather and climate patterns.
| mulmen wrote:
| Could this be leveraged to mitigate climate change?
| burkaman wrote:
| Maybe? Apparently if we blanket the Sahara with solar it
| could actually increase cloud cover and reduce solar
| potential in a lot of the rest of the world:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-01117-5.
|
| I guess my answer is no, it would literally cause the
| climate to change so by definition that's not mitigating
| climate change. It would be a form of geoengineering, which
| is sort of its own category separate from mitigation, which
| refers to action that reduces change.
| codingdave wrote:
| Deserts in the US are not the Sahara - they are large, flat
| open spaces of hard ground and sagebrush. I'm sure there are
| still challenges, but if you are envisioning sand dunes to all
| horizons, that isn't what our deserts look like.
| floxy wrote:
| Just for people outside of the U.S., we do also have some
| deserts with sand dunes.
|
| https://www.blm.gov/visit/imperial-sand-dunes
|
| https://www.blm.gov/visit/sand-mountain-recreation-area
|
| https://www.fs.usda.gov/visit/destination/oregon-dunes-
| natio...
|
| https://www.nps.gov/grsa/index.htm
|
| https://parksandrecreation.idaho.gov/parks/bruneau-dunes/
| dylan604 wrote:
| But are any of those in the same area of these 22M acres?
| digging wrote:
| That's mostly true, but there are some ergs (regions entirely
| buried in sand) in US deserts, and ergs are also a relatively
| small part of the Sahara.
| bmitc wrote:
| That doesn't address the cooling effect on the ground, where
| water could still pool up, does it? Also, a lot of plants and
| animals live there.
| crakenzak wrote:
| > and that at large scales them blocking the sun can actually
| effect the local climate as it cools the ground and allows
| rainwater to pool.
|
| This is a good thing.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Could this not completely reshape the local ecology?
| dangjc wrote:
| One other issue with the Sahara is that you still have to
| transport that energy to where it will be used. It's been
| difficult already to build transmission within the US between a
| few states. Crossing the Mediterranean and getting the energy
| across southern Europe (which is sunny and doesn't need it) to
| cloudier northern Europe would be a lot of permitting. If they
| can convert the Sahara electricity to liquid fuels, it might
| actually fit with trade patterns better.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| makes a lot of sense in the Southwest where the land can't be
| used productively for much else. They should create some programs
| to incentivize some of the farmers in California and other states
| to put up solar on their land so they stop consuming so much
| water as well
| trhway wrote:
| >to incentivize some of the farmers in California and other
| states to put up solar on their land
|
| agriculture production - ballpark of 4000-10000kg per acre sold
| at $1/kg, 2 harvests/year, i.e. $8000-$20000. Solar per acre -
| 300 days, 10 hours/day, 200Wt/m2, $0.04/KWh - $160/day at 50%
| coverage, ie. $50K/year.
|
| In general - the plants efficiency is less than 5%, ie. at
| least 4x less than that of solar panels, and at the end
| everything is about energy (and information as both are
| opposite of entropy (ie. life and technology is about
| decreasing of entropy in the local neighborhood by
| shifting/exporting it out of the neighborhood into the wider
| environment))
| ortusdux wrote:
| Direct link - https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/biden-harris-
| administratio...
| photonbeam wrote:
| 89000 km^2
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| Gotta be honest: I won't comprehend areas this large regardless
| of which unit system is used lol. Maybe I should invent a
| digestible unit that I'm familiar with, like "# of Denver metro
| areas" or something!
| p1mrx wrote:
| Just eyeballing a map, Denver is around (50 km)^2.
| 89000/(50^2) = 35 denvers
| all2 wrote:
| The state of Rhode Island.
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| The state of Maine is just over 22 million acres (22.6).
| Rhode Island is only about 988,000 according to this link:
| https://beef2live.com/story-ranking-states-total-
| acres-0-108...
| ta1243 wrote:
| It's about the area of Portugal or Maine, a little less than
| Iceland.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| It's about 35 billion turtles in area. Hope that helps!
| dataflow wrote:
| Take the square root and it becomes more comprehensible.
| 300km x 300km. Or 186mi x 186mi.
| sneak wrote:
| sqrt(89000) ~= 298
| theferalrobot wrote:
| That is significantly more land than the USA would need to power
| the entire USA with solar power. Why so much land? (That is 34k
| miles^2 when we would only need 22k at most, new solar
| generations could potentially get that amount down to 10k).
|
| https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/202...
| maxerickson wrote:
| You want the regulator to start with a perfected land use plan?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| The article says we would need 700k, but clearly the idea is
| that 22m acres of land are permitted to have solar, not that
| 22m acres of land will all have solar deployed. As the article
| says, this gives maximum flexibility.
|
| For example 700k acres in one spot would not be ideal as
| transmission losses to other regions would be significant, so
| we need more possible space to allow distributed production.
| SamBam wrote:
| Presumably this is opening up that much land for potential use,
| not putting diggers on the ground to start setting up panels
| tomorrow.
|
| The next phases will be deciding where to actually put
| individual farms.
| ben_w wrote:
| Nice.
|
| On paper, 22M acres is enough room for 1.78 TW annualised over a
| year[0], which is about 61% of current global electricity demand.
|
| I doubt they'll get close to filling this land up with PV, but
| perhaps at least making this much available will reduce the rate
| at which people ask how much land PV needs to take up.
|
| [0] 10% capacity factor, 20% efficient:
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=22+million+acres+*+10%2...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| For comparison:
|
| "Of the ~92 million acres of corn planted in the US each year,
| roughly 40 million acres (1.6% of the nation's land) are
| primarily used to feed cars and raise the octane of gasoline.
| If this land were repurposed with solar power, it could provide
| around three and a half times the electricity needs of the
| United States, equivalent to nearly eight times the energy that
| would be needed to power all of the nation's passenger vehicles
| were they electrified.
|
| However, if we were to transition this 40 million acres are of
| fuel to solar+food (agrivoltaics) - we could still meet 100% of
| our electricity needs, and power a nationwide fleet of electric
| vehicles."
|
| (solar panels produce roughly 200 times more energy per acre
| than corn)
|
| https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/03/10/solarfood-in-ethanol-...
| Faaak wrote:
| Biofuels really are mind bogglingly inefficient, but I didn't
| realize this much
| jgeada wrote:
| They're pretty efficient at moving public money into
| private hands though, which why there are such persistent
| lobbies to continue these subsidies.
|
| Socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.
| SllX wrote:
| That land will get repurposed organically when electric cars
| overtake ICE cars and the demand for corn-derived ethanol
| drops.
|
| Hopefully for something that tastes better than corn.
| ben_w wrote:
| Bunch of farmers woke me up at 04:25 this morning with a
| drive-slow horn-honking parade past my apartment.
|
| If I understand right, this protest was _in part_ due to an
| attempt by the (German) government to reduce the level at
| which farmers are being subsidised.
|
| Reason I bring this up, is that I have heard that the US
| only started using corn ethanol as an excuse to keep
| subsidising farmers, not because it was ever a good idea.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| You see similar things in California, billboards posted
| by farmers wailing about the state government raising
| water prices, when they are the ones subsidizing (to the
| nth degree) agricultural water to begin with.
| SllX wrote:
| I can absolutely believe that the Federal government did
| it for that reason, but I think it was my own State
| (California) that gave them the political cover because
| our dumbasses thought it was a genuinely good idea 20
| years ago and we mandated ethanol in gasoline first
| (California has corn farms, but we are not a big corn-
| growing State so much as a big almost-everything-else-
| growing State).
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Ethanol is better than what it replaced, MTBE, hence
| California's mandate. The problem was when the ag lobby
| started advocating for ethanol blends in excess of what
| is necessary to capture more subsidies.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20180407183020/https://www.ar
| b.c...
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/MTBE_FactSheet.html
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_tert-butyl_ether
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Hopefully for something that need also to drink less than
| corn!
| Loughla wrote:
| Other problem. When there is a need, that corn can be
| diverted from fuel to food.
| huytersd wrote:
| The type of corn grown for ethanol is basically inedible
| (maybe besides conversion into HFCS)
| ianburrell wrote:
| Dent corn is perfectly edible. The white variety is used
| in cornmeal, corn chips, and tortillas. Yellow is more
| used for animal feed and industrial use. But it is edible
| since it is pure starch.
|
| Also, except for emergencies, the corn wouldn't be
| diverted but the farmers would plant a different variety
| or different crop the next year.
| dylan604 wrote:
| food for whom? not all corn is equal, and isn't just a
| switch from fuel/food for people.
| BurnGpuBurn wrote:
| I agree 100% that corn is a very inefficient fuel source, but
|
| > If this land were repurposed with solar power, it could
| provide around three and a half times the electricity needs
| of the United States
|
| Isn't really accurate. It could never provide that, simply
| because solar is too intermittent. With (theoretically
| huuuuuge batteries) it could perhaps, but those don't exist.
| So it couldn't.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-
| Part-3.pdf (page 30)
|
| The batteries exist of course. Tesla ships 40GWh a year of
| them, and they are scaling up the next Megapack
| manufacturing facility in China.
|
| https://www.tesla.com/megafactory
| GaggiX wrote:
| Why are you using meters with acres?
|
| EDIT: I just realized that Wolfram does the conversion
| automatically, that's really cool.
| mulmen wrote:
| It's all just multiplying ratios.
| m101 wrote:
| The problem with solar is that we will have destroyed the
| environment to create those solar panels. The return on energy
| invested (RoEI) on solar is less than 10x which, when you're
| dealing with an energy budget like climate change etc, makes it
| a non-solution. Nuclear RoEI is more like 100x
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| From Wikipedia: "A 2015 review in Renewable and Sustainable
| Energy Reviews assessed the energy payback time and EROI of a
| variety of PV module technologies. In this study, which uses
| an insolation of 1700 kWh/m2/yr and a system lifetime of 30
| years, mean harmonized EROIs between 8.7 and 34.2 were
| found."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment
|
| Seems like the lower numbers come from older, obsolete PV
| technologies. Lots of improvement since even 2015.
| xp84 wrote:
| Yeah, it's too bad that we make our decisions based on
| emotion, a problem affecting the "eco" side as well as the
| "right wing reactionary" side.
|
| The "eco" side pushes solar and wind for everything and
| thinks nuclear plants inevitably explode. The "right wing"
| side pushes coal exclusively because it's sad that the few
| thousand coal miners left could lose their jobs.
|
| Nobody's weighing these things with fair metrics.
| profsummergig wrote:
| IMHO, we also need to bring more focus on 2nd and 3rd order
| effects of solar panels.
|
| They've been found to:
|
| - improve soil conditions under them
|
| - reduce water evaporation when installed over canals etc.
|
| - provide habitat for certain kinds of farm and wild animals
| (much like sunken ships provide habitat for certain marine
| animals)
|
| - provide insulation for structures that have them installed on
| the roofs
| genman wrote:
| This is good. It is a little over 1% of the US continuous land
| mass (e.g. coast to coast without Alaska and other territories).
| lucidguppy wrote:
| They should lease all federal parking lots for solar
| installations.
| wdh505 wrote:
| False. After having done a cost analysis of the increase in
| accidents in the parking lots due to the increased poles, the
| cheap cost of power from the grid in my area of the country,
| and the fact that I must hire a veteran owned firm if they are
| slightly less than 33.33% more expensive than private firms
| (aka they take the job and pocket 33.32% and subcontract out to
| their bidding competitors).
|
| Solar is not coming to a government parking lot near you.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| Every school in my town recently got massive solar in the
| parking lots. So it's definitely happening some places.
|
| It actually annoyed me a bit because my childhood elementary
| school is in my neighborhood of houses. And they constructed
| large metal structures in the parking lot and installed the
| solar. It's basically massive metal commercial metalwork, in
| a residential neighborhood. A bit weird.
| loceng wrote:
| If using nuclear how much land would be required to provide the
| same amount of energy?
| glenstein wrote:
| Probably dramatically less, but it's not an apples to apples
| comparison. You can be opportunistic with locating solar
| panels, siting them on land and surfaces that are not otherwise
| usable. So it's not necessarily in "competition" with other
| energy/infrastructure/etc projects when it comes to land usage.
| bmitc wrote:
| And what about the effects on the local ecosystems and habitat?
| justsocrateasin wrote:
| I think there is a very strong argument that the effects on the
| local ecosystems and habitat from putting down solar energy is
| significantly less than the effects that will occur from
| climate change. This is a straw man argument and I'm pretty
| tired of seeing it (similar vein - "wind turbines kill birds",
| yeah but not as much as climate change will!)
| Ajay-p wrote:
| It appears to also be a legal argument that has been used to
| stop solar development, endangered species, but also
| NIMBYism.
|
| https://electrek.co/2021/07/26/us-largest-solar-farm-is-
| scra...
| bmitc wrote:
| My comment isn't a logical fallacy. It's lazy of you to throw
| that out there, and it doesn't automatically debunk what
| you're responding to. Plus, I just asked a question.
|
| My comment comes from a place of pointing out a chain of
| events of engineering causing problems, then engineering
| solving those problems while creating new problems. Of
| course, if you just dismiss that plants and animals live
| there in the desert, then you don't need to think about them.
| But if you don't dismiss them but still need the solar power
| at all costs, then maybe studies could be commissioned that
| provide the ecosystem the best change for unintended negative
| change if the solar panels absolutely must be built.
|
| And let's not act like these solar panels will have much to
| do, if anything, with helping to mitigate climate change.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Hopefully less than the 38M acres of federal lands leased out
| for oil extraction?
| burkaman wrote:
| This is of course a big part of the analysis the government has
| already done: https://eplanning.blm.gov/public_projects/2022371
| /200538533/..., https://eplanning.blm.gov/public_projects/20223
| 71/200538533/....
|
| You are welcome to comment on these assessments if you have
| concerns or input: https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-
| ui/project/2022371/570.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| I have long thought there must be a reason why vast, empty plots
| of sun drenched land were not covered in solar panels. Half of
| Nevada could become the nation's power plant.
| stvltvs wrote:
| And destroy all that natural habitat full of biodivesity?
| Rooftop and parking lot solar for the win.
| barelyauser wrote:
| Is this satire?
| xp84 wrote:
| [edit: if you're joking, good -- ignore my reply]
|
| It's a desert. There's arguably less biodiversity there than
| most places. I'm pretty sure there's enough room for there to
| still be plenty of cactuses and jackrabbits AND a massive
| amount of solar panels.
|
| Rooftop and parking lot solar isn't the same thing. It's not
| automatically better. The efficiency of rooftop solar isn't
| nearly as good as an array that can follow the sun. Given
| finite resources you could make a case we're better off
| deploying those panels in a desert and connecting a big fat
| cable to them vs. a million houses all paying individual
| installers to install tiny, inefficient arrays piecemeal.
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