Big Solar Takes Some Heat
October 1st, 2008 Posted by Larry Hogue in renewable energyA couple of good articles have appeared recently airing differing opinions about whether Big Solar is truly green. This article in the Christian Science Monitor features the Sierra Club’s John Hiatt speaking out against the Big Solar land rush. Entitled “Are some solar projects no longer ‘green’?”, the article also features a podcast from the author considering why commercial rooftop solar hasn’t taken off. Oddly, he doesn’t mention SCE’s 500-1000 megawatt proposed commercial rooftop project in Los Angeles.
On the plus side he mentions the lack of a feed-in tariff in California. And another odd thing about the article is the photo accompanying it, which shows PV being installed on a house, while there’s no photo of the kind of gargantuan solar-trough facility the article is mostly about.
The comments posted at the end of the article range from the wise to the bone-headed (including the novel idea that shade from these solar facilities will bring the desert back to “life” by providing coolness and moisture). Get in there and make some comments of your own!
The second article appeared in the New York Times last week, and we have a link to it – along with some editorializing – on our main website. This one shows the debate going on within the Sierra Club about the value of Big Solar as compared to PV and other distributed generation approaches. Interesting-er and interesting-er!
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