this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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Is there enough available, usable land in California for 20 of these?
Wish I could find an easy way to show 4,600 acres overlaid on a California map.
You could get 6.5 of these in an area the size of San Franciso (30,000 acres). Relative to the size of California, that's a pixel or three.
There are vast areas of desert out there.
I'm sure there is. It also looks like solar and agriculture can be mutually beneficial, though I haven't seen any large scale projects doing it yet.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-showing-land-cover-types-across-California-and-the-size-and-location-of-USSE_fig1_283005360
A lot of that open land is BLM land, so idk if they could get it re-zoned for this type of use. I suppose they could use the Eastern desert portion, assuming they can build the grid to transfer the power, and actually finish the ecological impact reports.
I read the other day they are doing just that
https://electrek.co/2024/01/18/us-govt-opens-22-million-acres-federal-lands-solar/
I really feel the env impact reports should be expidited. The impact of global warming is gonna fuck things up pretty bad.
Not to say they shouldnt be looked at, but we shouldn't spend a decade debating impacts on some species of lizard if they'll be driven to extinction if we fail to act anyway.
Yeah, I completely agree. I'm sure there are groups that won't though, and that's the kind of stuff that really stalls these types of projects.