the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Dec 16, 2024
A renewable energy company, Avantus, which KKR, a private equity company, owns, is chopping thousands of 100-year-old Joshua trees into pulp just outside Boron, a California desert town, to make way for a 2,300-acre solar project. The construction also kicks up dust containing a fungus that causes valley fever. “Let’s destroy the environment to save the environment. That seems to be the mentality. It’s hard to comprehend,” said Deric English, who teaches at Boron Junior-Senior High School (Los Angeles Times, May 31).
On paper, solar energy is supposed to be green, reducing pollution. But when it is produced on a large scale in solar farms, solar energy damages the environment in the long term or irrevocably.
Solar energy currently makes up 3% of the U.S. electricity supply. Producing it on a large scale to replace fossil fuel-driven electricity requires large land areas. For example, the Solar Star project in California, which is among the largest solar energy facilities in the world, requires 1.7 million solar panels spread over 3,000 acres north of Los Angeles. A natural gas power plant 100 miles south produces the same energy on 122 acres.
To increase solar energy production to 45% of the U.S. electricity supply, the land area required to install solar panels reaches twice the size of Massachusetts, according to the Department of Energy (DOE).
And not any land will do, either. To deliver solar energy to consumers, the land must be flat, dry, sunny, and near electric transmission infrastructure.
One such land choice is the deserts of California. But solar power plants require water for cleaning solar panels or cooling turbine generators. Using large volumes of groundwater or surface water in such arid locations permanently depletes precious underground water.
Another choice is the Midwest. If the solar panels are installed, nearly half would be on the U.S.’s best land for producing food, fiber, and other crops. To install solar farms, builders must clear the land of vegetation, including trees. After the solar panels are installed, the topsoil, nutritionally rich for crops, is depleted by erosion over time. Its recovery requires decades.
Such environmental damages could be minimized or prevented by first investigating, developing, and deploying environmentally friendly technologies before launching them. But such effort takes time and money. For this reason, solar energy companies do not include their projects’ environmental damage in their “business calculations and projections.” After all, they are after profits at all costs in the very short term.