Primarily it would be if the solar owner isn't paying the landowner and the landowner wants to git it orf their laaand.
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Prediction: Coal has fallen. Nuclear is next then Oil.
- Thread starter nwdiver
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Primarily it would be if the solar owner isn't paying the landowner and the landowner wants to git it orf their laaand.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
The solar PV installation should be generating income. It the owner isn't paying the landowner, that's a simple problem and destroying the installation is not the solution.
More likely, the initial land lease was cheap and the land owner wants more money to renew the lease.
Lease agreements already have restoration clauses which require removal of everything.
I think this is more about why it'd be removed earlier in case the developer goes bankrupt.
The lease agreement may or may not allow for changes in ownership.
If the PV is sitting and producing I'd expect that whoever takes over the assets would continue paying until the end the lease term, until market conditions are such that they can't earn enough.
But if there needs new negotiation, the landowner might indeed look for more money or land value may have shifted so the landowner just wants out.
Or like the case of Walmart, they let EA lease and set up the infrastructure then tell EA, we'll take it from here. LOL
There are no inverters in solar panels, only solar systems. A failure in the solar system is NOT something that requires scrapping and recycling the whole thing. This is a huge false equivalence to abandoned methane wells.
The comment about inverter failure was about when an orphaned system would stop producing power.
The system has to be removed at the end of the lease, and if the landowner isn't receiving required payments during the lease it would have to be removed as well. Whether or not hardware is working isn't _directly_ irrelevant.
Of course, any removed, working hardware would have some value in the used market, which has grown substantially.
But old panels and hardware wouldn't be used in any other commercial installations.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
‘Explosive growth’ in petrochemical production poses risks to human health
New report warns of deadly health risks from fossil fuel pollution, including alarming rise in neurodevelopmental issues
www.theguardian.com
Chemical pollution tied to fossil fuel operations poses serious risks to human health, warns a new analysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday. Citing data from dozens of studies, the report points to an alarming rise in neurodevelopmental issues, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and certain cancers in young people taking place amid what the paper’s author calls “explosive growth” in the petrochemical industry. Between 1990 and 2019, rates of certain cancers in people under 50 increased dramatically. Meanwhile, fossil fuel use and petrochemical production have increased fifteen-fold since the 1950s, according to the report.
All of this plastic is laden with over 10,000 chemicals,” Landrigan said. “These chemicals include carcinogens, developmental neurotoxicants, endocrine disruptors and hundreds more that have never been tested for toxicity.” He added that these chemicals leach out of plastics where they can cause a range of ailments including cancer, cardiovascular disease and infertility.
I found this article about hazards, regulations, and impact on communities of LNG terminals to be pretty well written.
www.canarymedia.com
How safe are LNG terminals? Nearby communities have no way of knowing
As more liquefied natural gas terminals are built along the U.S. Gulf Coast, residents say a lack of transparency leaves them unsure about the safety hazards.
www.canarymedia.com
But unlike an orphaned well, there isn't any further ecological damage done by just leaving it there. And as stated before, there's scrap metal value in the system. So the landowner doesn't need to spend a dime for a 3rd party to come and retrieve the system, very different from an uncapped well.
If they used concrete bases there's an obvious cost for removal. And there's a cost for any additional restoration work that's required after removing everything.
There may be a net gain or cost in the panels, depending on the used market value.
So it's not cut-and-dried that a company would be willing to come in to do the work.
That's why this kind of stuff needs to be bonded.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure why you're persevering on this issue.
There is absolutely no parallel between the damage done to the environment by a fossil fuel well (from the drilling, then operation, then abandonment) and a solar panel installation.
There is a parallel, it's only the _scale_ that is different.
Whether it's an oil well, gas well, a solar farm, a wind farm, or any other energy source, when it is no longer commercially viable, or any contract term is complete, it should be properly decommissioned. Bankruptcy shouldn't be a get out, and that's why a bond and/or escrow is needed.
Naturally, all companies want to minimize costs, and decommissioning is a cost they will try to avoid, so the law has to make sure it can't be avoided.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
It's not the scale. There is a vast difference in the difficulty of cleaning up and plugging a fossil well and dismantling a solar farm.
You can dismantle a solar farm in a few days/weeks and cart everything off to be recycled.
It is difficult/impossible to clean up fossil well pollution and plug the well... we're talking millions of dollars.
This town is going to cover its cemetery with solar canopies
The residents of Saint-Joachim in Pays de la Loire, France, are putting solar canopies over their cemetery.
electrek.co
RIP in quiet and comfort. Can't do that with a fossil fuel plant on cemetery grounds.
I think you're both right in different ways. It takes far more specialized expertise and equipment to plug a well properly. Once the pollution is out of the hole it's extremely difficult to remediate. Pad sites are generally less than acre for small wells here, though there are several per square mile.
Solar facilities are increasingly covering larger and larger areas. Some are scraped flat to start. A few out here weren't destructively graded, but just the action of a few vehicles and people walking on the brittle soils and ground cover was enough to turn the surrounding ground to open dirt that have not recovered at all. Revegetation of that area, especially without any kind of irrigation, is a pipe dream. If you wanted to do agrivoltaics, or return the ground to productive rangeland afterwards, you'd have to have a very very very light touch on the ground during every phase of install and decommissioning. When solar facilities are small patches here and there, that's one thing, but the facilities on the drawing board here are high triple digit acres. That's a lot of ecosystem to mess up nearly permanently too.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
The only permanent scar on the land is activity that continually destroys nature trying to regrow. If you don't continuously scrape the land or pollute it with toxins (fossil fuel products) it will rewild quickly. Agrivoltaics works.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Oil industry has sought to block state backing for green tech since 1960s
Research shows industry lobbying against support for solar panels and electric cars while enjoying subsidies itself
www.theguardian.com
The oil industry has fought against government support for clean technologies for more than half a century, the Guardian can reveal, even as vast subsidies have propped up its polluting business model. It lobbied lawmakers to block support for low-carbon technologies such as solar panels, electric cars and heat pumps as far back as the 1960s, analysis shows. Trade associations in the US and Europe stymied green innovations under the guise of supporting a “technology neutral” approach to avoiding the damage done by burning their fuels. The same incumbents were happy to lobby for government support when they were getting started, and had continued to benefit from it since, said Dario Kenner, a visiting research fellow at the University of Sussex who trawled through decades of public statements from the American Petroleum Institute (API) and FuelsEurope
It has been proven that the fossil fuel industry caused the climate crisis and deliberately lied about it as they hid the science,” she said. “So finding out that they knew renewable energy was such a threat to their industry that they had to lobby policymakers to rig the market against cleaner and cheaper technology to protect profits is just par for the course.
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