NYTimes, NPR, etc: Solar energy rising; so too are water, ecological snarls
The collision between water managers and renewable energy investors who need a lot of water to cool their solar power gadgetry has been getting more attention lately. The NYTimes‘s Todd Woody gave the issue particularly lucid and non-crusading explanation this morning in the business section. He starts readers off with a vignette from Nevada, and the amazing disparity between the water available from local agencies and the huge appetite for more by a developer who wants to construct some gigantic solar farms in the area. Most notable is that the story does not merely say solar energy can require a lot for cooling, but smoothly differentiates technologies that hardly ever need lots of water (photovoltaics), and others that sometimes do (solar concentrators with associated steam or other volatile gas turbines). It goes further to break things down into dry cooling for condensors, and wet cooling (ie evaporative cooling). All that while keeping it a biz story. One comes away thinking this is a big problem, but not a show stopper for solar power if done right and perhaps a bit less efficiently overall.
A related story, with a broader vision, ran a few days ago at NPR, where Jeff Brady reports in broader terms the “heartburn” among some environmentalists due to federal plans to carpet large sections of public lands out west in solar energy plants. Water comes up, as do such things as vegetation and desert tortoises.
Vaguely Related Discouraging News:
NYTimes – John Tagliabue: From Turbines and Straw, Danish Self-Sufficiency ; A feel-good tale of a little island that darned near is self-sufficient in renewable energy. But, as the story makes explicit, there is a down side. Even when one has a lot of advantages, it is very, very difficult to get a whole community off the grid and just about carbon neutral.
I am having déjà vu here – isn’t there an island in the Shetlands or Orkneys or somewhere doing about the same thing? I feel as though I already posted on it, but can’t find it. Gad.
- Charlie Petit
