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By
Kai McNamee, Patrick Jarenwattananon,
Ari Shapiro
October
13, 2023
A historic agreement aims to pave the
way for large scale solar farms
NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Dan Reicher of
Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment about a
historic agreement addressing land-use for large scale solar projects.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
To avoid the worst effects of climate change, the U.S. is going to
need a lot more solar panels. Those solar arrays need to go somewhere,
sometimes in forests or on farmland or on Indigenous lands. And that
can pit the solar industry against people inclined to support them,
like conservation groups or agricultural interests or Native tribes.
Yesterday some of those major stakeholders announced what they are
calling an historic agreement to address land use issues and hopefully
make it easier to install more panels in more places. Dan Reicher led
these talks. He is a senior research fellow at the Stanford
University's Woods Institute for the Environment. Thanks for joining
us.
DAN REICHER: Good to be with you.
SHAPIRO: Walk us through what this agreement achieves.
REICHER: The agreement, we hope, will advance large-scale solar
development to fight climate change but, at the same time, promote
land conservation and support local community interests. It's a tall
order, but we think we can get there.
SHAPIRO: Can you give us a specific example of a place where
you think this might open the door for a project that could otherwise
have been caught up?
REICHER: There's a variety of places. One is - you mentioned
agricultural lands. You know, there's increasingly the ability to
integrate solar panels into farm fields by raising the height of the
panels, by spreading them apart. Another would be on what we call
disturbed lands - old surface mining sites, old toxic waste sites that
have been cleaned up, shut down. There's a great example in Kentucky
where an old coal surface mine is being redeveloped, and it'll have
enough solar panels to serve almost 175,000 people. So we've got good
places to do it.
SHAPIRO: What do you do about the large, influential groups
that actively oppose and continue to fight solar projects? I mean, how
much of the basic problem of finding locations for these developments
does the deal actually solve?
REICHER: Well, I think that's part of the problem. There is
some active opposition. But if you can make the projects more
attractive to communities, if you can make the projects more
acceptable to conservation and environmental groups, we're bringing
the price of solar down dramatically. Give you an example - you know,
say you've got to build a thousand-acre solar project. Well, what
about protecting - permanently protecting another thousand acres
adjacent to it and not just protecting but restoring parts of it?
That's a deal you can really work out.
SHAPIRO: To take a step back, the U.S. has a lot of homes,
businesses, shopping malls, warehouses. Why isn't roof space enough?
Why are solar farms needed in the first place?
REICHER: I would love to think that the rooftops of America
could do it, but the problem is we are talking about an absolutely
massive amount of land to really address climate. We're talking about
land that's roughly the equivalent of the entire state of
Massachusetts and Connecticut combined. We might be able to do 15 or
20% of what we need to do in this country with rooftop solar and urban
projects, but we got to go to the big, big properties if we're going
to really make a big difference.
SHAPIRO: Given the scale of the need, you offered a couple
examples of easy wins - an unused mine that can now be turned into a
solar development. But are there going to have to be a lot of projects
that aren't easy wins, that don't have an ideal resolution, where
there are going to have to be trade-offs?
REICHER: There are indeed going to be trade-offs. There are,
you know, ideal places where you want to go initially. There are going
to be tougher places where you need to go. But I think as communities
get more comfortable with this, as conservation groups get more
comfortable - you know, we have the largest conservation group in the
country, the Nature Conservancy, having led this negotiation from the
environmental side. But the good news is there are plenty of places to
build these projects where I think we can find acceptable resolutions
and get these built and really address climate change.
SHAPIRO: That's Dan Reicher, a senior research fellow at the
Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and lead broker of a new
solar development agreement. Thank you very much.
REICHER: My pleasure.
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