I am writing in response to “Henry Kronk: What if renewable energy was beautiful?”
Mr. Kronk’s commentary encourages Vermont to embrace the installation of industrial solar power plants for the greater good of Vermont energy sovereignty and to preclude a dystopian future of societal collapse. Along the way he invokes a “learn to live with it” argument that solar panels should be seen as beautiful by virtue of their potential contribution to climate change mitigation.
He portrays local objections to solar farms both big and small as being based solely on aesthetics, when there are serious ecological and economic ramifications to any solar installation. The problems a solar farm introduces scale with its size, particularly in a landscape as varied and scenic as Vermont’s.
The implementation of solar in Vermont is a complex issue that requires a nuanced, site-specific approach. Few object to solar installation on residential rooftops, the expansive flat roofs of commercial and government buildings, on canopies over parking lots, covering abandoned gravel pits.
Looking around any Vermont neighborhood reveals that 85 unutilized solar acres are easily found in these locations. The question is not whether we can spare 85 woodland or farmland acres (we can’t!), but why aren’t solar panels being put where they belong?
One answer is that state and federal incentives and state usurpation of local control have encouraged out-of-state corporations to see Vermont as an irresistible money-making opportunity, provided they can minimize their upfront costs by acquiring low-priced rural land and blanketing it with solar panels regardless of ecological or aesthetic consequence.
The power and profits generated by these large arrays is siphoned through the grid to other states. Thus, the solar panel blight visited upon Vermont does not serve the sovereignty Mr. Kronk seeks.
Kit Ausschnitt
Shaftsbury
