Unintended Conqueses

In life, there are people who tell you what's wrong with what you're doing and that you shouldn't do it, and then there are people who see an opportunity to keep doing it and improve the outcome. In this case, the naysayers have claimed that solar farms deprive the US of productive land for agriculture, while the folks who can see an opportunity create jobs and new businesses.

Solar farms are booming in the US and putting thousands of hungry sheep to work | AP News

By the way, I'm fine with all of the above approaches to energy, as we move forward to energy independence while working to impact climate change positively.

  Is this the word you were attempting to post  -- consequences  --?

Haha yep! Thanks. Now I'll have to live with it because you can't edit a topic title, and boy oh boy, I edit a lot.

But I learned a new word...agrivoltaics.  Wow!  Very interesting.

Candy

How many of these solar farms are foreign owened , and are they getting federal money to start them up ?  I worry about taking food producing land out of production and the long term unintended consequences of using land, water and food to produce energy.  It takes a lot of water and farmland to produce ethenol, and these solar farms are really just getting started.  It will be interesting to see the pressure it puts on our food supply such as beef.

The Inflation Reduction Act apparently provides for $56K in subsidies per acre for start ups. There's a bunch of tax incentives as well.

The overwhelming majority of solar energy comes from roof top installations on homes and buildings.     To the extent there are "farms" they tend to mostly be in desert areas which isnt food producing land and not  desired for housing development.    In those case the primary negative impact would be on wildlife.

Where I live in Indianapolis they have put solar farms in areas that would be otherwise vacant.  For example, law requires you to have a fenced off area that surrounds your airport.  Much of that land next to the runways is just empty grassland.   They decided to fill that up with solar panels.    That was my conservative Republican government here.    And that was a good idea.

Solar is a small piece of the energy puzzle and isnt ever likely to grow beyond that ratio. But Its good that we implement it where it makes sense - primarily in the South West.   

Acording to the AP article they raise less the 1 sheep per acre, when without the solar panels subsidized by our tax dollars they could be raising about 10 ewes and 15 lambs or 25 sheep per acre.  It will be interesting to see who really benifits form  these arrangements.  I do know from a close source that the money these farms can make from solar contracts dwarfs what they could ever make in the AG industry and are garenteed for long terms

Thats true for Wind Power too.  Farmers get 10k/year in royalty from every windmill they allow to be placed on their private land.    Makes for a heckuva nice bonus on top of whatever they're making from farming.

Of course it was; even you, with your severely truncated spelling skills, knew that; your post was obviously an attempt to be gratuitously annoying.