To the editor: Local weather columnist Sammy Roth has performed an admirable job explaining photo voltaic vitality, however from a perspective that’s basically flawed. (“Nobody loves Biden’s Western Solar Plan. But it’s what we’ve got,” column, Oct. 3)
There are two sorts of environmentalists: Those that reside in, say, Delaware, and those that reside within the deserts of the Southwest. A notion exists amongst a number of the former group that ridding the nation of fossil fuels is price destroying desert “wasteland.”
These of us environmentalist sorts who reside in that wasteland resent that viewpoint, as a result of destruction of nature isn’t a path to restoring organic variety. And there are lots of different steps that needs to be taken, amongst them the usage of each final developed piece of land as a photo voltaic electrical energy generator. Rooftops (particularly of mega warehouses), freeway rights-of-way, parking zone shade constructions — all of those and different developed lands needs to be utilized to their fullest extent earlier than any extra destruction of habitat happens.
Rooftop and parking zone constructions are notably helpful, since electrical energy generated on the end-use level is especially environment friendly. As well as, the desert’s well-known sunshine is just reasonably extra conducive to energy technology than areas of low daylight ranges.
Determining methods to destroy the desert sparsely isn’t the way in which ahead.
Denys Arcuri, Indio
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To the editor: As a substitute of placing photo voltaic panels in open land the place we must run miles of wire to attach them to the grid, how about we mount them above the nation’s highways?
There, they might not take up uncooked land and would shade autos from the solar. There would already be infrastructure to get to them, and the hoods created by the panels might seize air pollution from autos and enhance air high quality.
Don Martens, Pomona
