In Between Times 3-22-2024
Solar growing pains in the Midwest, Floating flowers suck up pollution, Restoring Hawaiian forests, Modular nuke reactors are coming
JOIN US April 22-26 in Dallas Texas!
Earthx2024
One Planet - One Mission
There’s no other sustainability gathering like it.
April 22-26 in Dallas - Save Your Place - CLICK HERE
Ohio greenlights massive solar, storage and agrivoltaics project despite local opposition
The new solar farm will be the largest in Ohio, will spur economic growth in a rural part of Ohio, and is supported by some trade unions and some environmental groups. But the people directly adjacent to the project are not generally happy. That this land was purchased by Bill Gates and is now slated for a solar farm does not rub the locals the right way.
We are talking about NIMBYism, a disposition that transcends ideology. In this case rural conservatives are fighting the project. In many other places other projects are opposed by those more on the left. Many a landfill has been scuttled by enviros. In fact a good number of “green” projects have been scuttled because of pressure from people one might think would be inclined toward such projects. A classic example is the wind farm fight over a project off of very breezy Martha’s Vineyard.
Not in my backyard. It says it all. But the question is really one of property rights. If one owns the property why shouldn’t one be able to put a solar farm on it? It’s not really happening in your backyard if a project is happening on someone else’s property.
This is a simple enough concept and it is one enshrined in law in the United States. But this is a double edged sword (as it should be). If one is free to plant a solar farm in the middle of a community that doesn’t want it can anything else be restricted? Additionally, what about the lines running from this farm? Are they running across other people’s property? If so, how are these people being compensated? Or, as is often the case has the Bill Gates solar farm enlisted the government to employ eminent domain rules? We don’t know the answer to these questions. But as solar becomes cheaper and cheaper and becomes more viable economically questions like the ones above are going to have to be addressed openly with other projects. People do not want to feel as though their communities are being colonized and they have a right to feel that way. On the other hand solar farms may prove very viable investments down the road and if they are on private land then what is the beef?
(From Yahoo)
The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the go-ahead to what will be one of the largest solar farms in the United States, despite the opposition of local governments and citizens.
The gigantic $1 billion endeavor, the largest solar project in the state by far, will spread over 6,000 acres of farmland in staunchly Republican Madison County. Some of the acreage is owned by Bill Gates, according to reports. When completed, it will be the nation’s largest demonstration of agrivoltaics, which combines farming and solar generation on the same plot of land.
The proposed project, dubbed Oak Run, also includes a massive array of batteries that will allow the plant to keep dispatching firm power even when the sun isn’t shining. It’s being developed by Savion, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell, and boasts 800 megawatts of solar panels and 300 megawatts of energy storage.
Click here for the article.
Floating flower farms offer solution to water pollution crisis
Maybe part of the solution anyway.
This makes a lot of sense. We say this as avid gardeners. What is waste for humans is often food for plants. The trick is getting that balance right. Too much plant food can do more harm than good.
But this recent discovery reminds of the process mangroves employ in keeping our coasts clean(er). They suck up the nasty stuff (including carbon) at an amazing rate. Perhaps the floating gardens could do something similar in other places.
(From Green Citizen)
The study, conducted over a 12-week period, revealed that these floating gardens were capable of extracting 52% more phosphorus and 36% more nitrogen than what is naturally removed by the water's nitrogen cycle. This significant increase in nutrient uptake is a major breakthrough in efforts to clean up polluted water bodies, which suffer from excessive runoff of harmful chemicals from farms, urban lawns, and septic tanks. Such pollution contributes to the proliferation of harmful algae blooms, creating dead zones that threaten aquatic life and disrupt ecosystems.
The research highlights the potential of using certain types of flowers, notably giant marigolds, which have proven to be especially effective in this process. These marigolds not only thrive on the floating rafts but also produce commercially viable blooms and stems, making them an attractive option for the cut-flower market—a multibillion-dollar industry. This dual benefit of environmental remediation and economic opportunity is particularly relevant in areas like Miami, the heart of the U.S. cut-flower trade, where the researchers are based.
Click here for the article.
Why businesses should stop(?) planting trees and start protecting forests
Why not both? (If done the right way.)
The concept of carbon offsets is increasingly well established economically and in the mind of the public. A company calculates its carbon footprint and then “offsets” this footprint with carbon credits or other means. One of these means is by planting new trees which will sequester carbon from the air. (Which are often planted via carbon credit programs.)
It makes a lot of sense. There is great promise in this area and even more in the great kelp forests and bamboo forests of the world which grow faster than trees and so can sequester carbon more quickly.
But the worlds established great forests are vitally important and are too often under threat. It makes sense for companies looking to offset their carbon footprints to protect what we already have. Additionally if raw forested land is seen as an asset in and of itself, something a company can put on its books as having (an added) value, that forest is much more likely to avoid the saw.
The answer is likely a mix of planting new forests and protecting old ones.
(From GreenBiz)
Tree planting programs often lead to a loss of biodiversity, taking us further away from achieving a nature-positive world. Mexico’s Sowing Life campaign destroyed over 180,000 acres of forest in its first year due to a perverse incentive structure. China’s Grain for Green program reduced the country's native forest cover by 6.6 percent as a consequence of planting single-species tree plantations. And projects across the world have destroyed non-forested ecosystems (grassland, shrubland and peatland) through afforestation, the act of planting trees in areas where forests would not otherwise occur.
Despite all the campaigns and pledges, forests continue to disappear globally at an unprecedented rate. Even if we could plant enough trees to keep up with the current rate of forest loss, the traits that make forests long-term carbon sinks and biodiversity strongholds — large trees, mature ecosystems and soil accumulation — can take centuries to re-create.
Click here for the article.
Boosting restoration of Hawaiian forests
Hawaii has lost more species per square mile over the last 200 years than any other area on Earth. Birds were hardest hit but endemic plant species have also suffered. Hawaii, with an ideal growing climate was only protected by its isolation. Now, the once isolated island chain faces unique environmental challenges. Restoring native forests is one of these.
(From AsAm News)
$12 million grant for American Forests, a non-profit conservation group, will help underserved Hawaiian communities fund reforestation efforts. The grant from the USDA Forest Service will help 10 tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations restore forests damaged by disasters like wildfire and disease. They will use the money to plant 2 million trees with the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 1 million metric tons.
Click here for the article.
Nuclear future: Why Canada is so excited about small modular reactors
Gov. Glenn Youngkin still believes that Virginia will deploy and operate the nation’s first commercial small modular nuclear reactor
But it won’t be in southwest Virginia (core coal country), the commonwealth’s most economically challenged area, as Youngkin proposed in 2022.
(From Cardinal News)
The governor’s remarks came 17 months after he pledged to deploy the state’s first commercial SMR in Southwest Virginia as part of his “all- of-the-above” energy plan. Nuclear power was a part of the plan and was touted as a source for baseload power that is clean and reliable.
SMRs are smaller, simpler versions of traditional nuclear reactors that produce about a third of the power produced by the traditional, large reactors. They can be built in a factory and shipped to a site, which saves construction time, reduces the risks and is cheaper. No SMR has been built yet in the U.S.
Click here for the article.
Event
March 28
Fragile Neighborhoods with Seth Kaplan
The Village Square
Location: Online
This podcast episode of Village SquareCast will drop on March 28th. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts or at https://podfollow.com/villagesquarecast/view.
Too many of us live in neighborhoods plagued by rising crime, school violence, family disintegration, addiction, alienation, and despair. Even the wealthiest neighborhoods are not immune; while poverty exacerbates these challenges, they exist in zip codes rich and poor, rural and urban, and everything in between.
Our special guest, Seth D. Kaplan, is an expert on fragile states across the world, consulting for the World Bank, U.S. State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as developing country governments and NGOs. His new book “Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society One Zip Code at a Time” brings Seth’s experience overseas to our social decline in America to revitalize our local institutions and the social ties that knit them together.