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Solar panels between railway tracks? (www.euronews.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm all for putting solar panels all over the place, but won't these get dusty and oily and need loads of cleaning after trains pass over?

Also, costing €623,000 over three years sounds rather expensive for just 100m (although that roughly equates to 11KW).

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

On the contrary, I’m afraid. Land is in very short supply. The issue is that even if the land is not currently developed it is doing vital stuff already. If it’s used for food production, if it’s a bit of forest storing massive amounts of CO2, if it’s home the insects pollinating our food supply, if it’s…

I won't claim to be an expert, but I'm gonna push back on this point. Local conditions will ofc always vary, but take Germany for example, which is probably one of the more densely populated countries.

Based on the numbers i can find anywhere from 14%-16% of our agriculturally used land is used to produce biomass. This is significantly less efficient than if even a fraction of this area were used for photvoltaics. And those rapeseed or corn monocultures probably have close to zero value for biodiversity, on the contrary i'd imagine that pesticide use will negatively impact nature overall. With solar panels on the other hand you can still use the underlying land to plant stuff like wild flowers and so on, if you wanted. There are also the already mentioned hybrid uses in agriculture where you plant crops below the panels or just use the land for grazing.

On a side note since you mention forests. Just recently there was a number of articles on how due to their poor condition german forests have actually gone from being carbon sinks to carbon sources, releasing more CO2 than they bind.

One more limiting factor that i forgot to mention above is lack of qualified contractors to actually build solar farms or put panels on roofs. Particularly with residential homes that seems to be another common complaint.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 21 minutes ago) (1 children)

Could be a difference in availability of land, but in Sweden you'd not be granted permission for something as mundane as a solar farm if it meant taking farmland out of production.

As for the forests... That's my greatest fear, that climate change will kill off large swathes of Oxygen producers by increasing ocean temperatures or making trees unable to thrive!

How is agricultural land defined if it isn't used to grow biomass?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

How is agricultural land defined if it isn’t used to grow biomass?

I can see how i wasn't specific enough with my wording. This is what i am talking about. Basically growing plants for the purpose of energy production, rather than e.g. food or material useage.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

Oh, i see😊 When the EED takes effect in 2025/2026 id wager the return will be better for that use than solar panels, as all public buildings will be fitted with some sort of solar capture. Wood is a great energy store, as well, which we need more of.

Oh, and in roughly the same time frame the steps of mandatory mixing of renewable sources in central heating will start, so such agricultural land will be economically more important.