Thousands of acres of crop land getting turned into solar farms across the Midwest

[GSPHUNTER]

Coal is going nowhere

Natural gas is the next target for the greenies. It's already started.

 

[11boo]

Natural gas is the next target for the greenies. It's already started.

They want to ban gas stoves and gas heat.

 

[Newtosavage]

I don’t know where to start with this one. I’m old enough to remember when the same idiots that are pushing global warming/ climate change were saying we were heading into another ice age. All they know for sure is there’s a major crisis and we need them “the smart people “ to fix it. Really I guess I’d rather see the solar fields than those stupid inefficient wind turbines. $250000 fine for shooting an eagle but the wind turbines can grind em up all year long and it’s all paid for with our tax money leave it up to the power companies they’d put in highly efficient clean burning coal

"Clean burning" coal. LOL That's funny.

 

[Loper]

So I fly for the NG part time. I’ve noticed in the last year or so solar farms are all of the sudden popping up everywhere, seemingly overnight.

Below are a few pictures I snapped the other night. This thing was massive, and more was being added. It was absolutely disgusting to see. View attachment 521194View attachment 521195View attachment 521196
Hundreds if not thousands of acres of habitat and hunting opportunity destroyed. Meanwhile there is a massive and sprawling warehouse district next to the airport. I haven’t seen a single solar panel on a roof.

Where the **** are our conservation organizations on this!? I’m not sure how anyone can witness this and defend it as better for the environment. It’s simply maddening, and it feels like there isn’t a damn thing I or anyone can do about it.

I’ve read through all the posts in this thread and I normally don’t get involved in topics like this, but I’ll chime in just to give a little bit of a different perspective.

I find it interesting that the post mentions that it is absolutely disgusting to see that the solar farms are causing hundreds, if not thousands of habitat and hunting of opportunity destroyed. Based upon the title of the post calling out solar farms and the images included showing only those solar farms, it seems like solar farms are the only thing that is worth getting upset about.

However, in the same post it is called out that there is a massive and sprawling warehouse district. Not to negatively call out the OP, but where are the photos of the warehouse district or sprawl that has destroyed all the acreage of habitat hunting opportunity? Where are the pictures of all the shopping plazas or the thousands of tract homes that have been built over top of farmland or clearcut forests? I’m curious to hear how much the landscape has changes from sprawl and development that he’s seen from above over his time flying.

Because sprawl happens so frequently, yet gradually in terms of smaller pieces of land, I think many of us are no longer shocked or appalled when it happens. Most of us just accept it as something that will always take place and we shrug our shoulders when we see a strip mall going up on the edge of town or a new road expansion heading further out. In just a few years, what was once considered to be rural or on the outskirts of town, is no longer considered that, as sprawl and development has taken over several more square miles, and this perpetuates over and over again over decades.

In my uninformed opinion, sprawl should be a much larger topic of discussion in terms long term sustainability for the various ecologies, which destroys habitat and hunting opportunities. Yet, I don’t often hear people calling out “Where the **** are our conservation organizations on this!?” when it comes to sprawl.

Once a large piece of land is cut up into much smaller parcels and sold off to numerous individuals, many times the individuals want to build on it and “improve” it. The original, broader chunk of land will almost never return to its natural state as there are too many people who own a little bit and have a small interest in it. I’m yet to hear of a small to large scale city in the history of the world where a government, company or individual buys up a large sums of small parcels and converts that land back to its natural habitat by tearing down buildings and ripping up sewers systems, concrete foundations and roads.

I am not an expert on the matter but I would venture to guess that sprawl and development has likely
destroyed more habitat and hunting opportunities than anything else in North America. While I’m not a fan huge solar farms taking up potential habit for wildlife, it is likely much less impactful than subdividing the land into hundreds or thousands of smaller parcels sold to various individuals and pouring concrete building foundations and roads for tract homes and malls. Solar farms are a hot topic because when they are established as it does seem to affect a large piece of land almost overnight.

However, If sprawl prevention is not focused on, society as a whole is going to continue to spread out and rural land is going to be more and more developed. The development in this country may continue to sprawl out over the next decades and centuries until there is very little land left to develop (and for wildlife) which would be a HUGE loss of habitat and hunting opportunities.

I don’t know what the solution is, but perhaps there should be a push for cities to build up rather than out and it should be more prioritized by hunters and conservation organizations. I’m not an expert, but I think that this might be one of the few long term ways to retain some of the remaining habitat and hunting opportunities.

Just to note, while my response may seem like this an attack on the OP, please know that it is not my intention. I am not trying to get in any arguments or personal attacks. I think the OP has raised a valid point and I don’t disagree with him. I just used his post as a way to identify how we (myself included) often times overlook the (in my opinion) much worse gradual sprawl that is so badly destroying habitat and hunting opportunities, and we perhaps should focus on this more.

 

[Beendare]

View attachment 521405

And who do you think will pay to clean thatup in 20years when the panels are no good and it costs more to retro fit- the taxpayers.
Look, some solar is a good idea…but the ”All renewable” crowd needs to look at the history of these highly incentivized projects ( solar subsidies are huge)
Search deactivated wind farms…there is one they couldn’t get to pencil in one of the windiest places on earth in Hawaii- its a rotting boneyard scar on the land.

Corporations walk away from these mines, and sites like this all thetime…with the taxpayer holding the bag.

I blame our current gov. Those Democrat idiots are giving subsidies of $50,000 an acre to install solar. its the new gold rush. Do they make you post a bond to insure the cleanup- nope. The Dems are just shovelling money to these big outfits…and historically they become Superfund sites many years from now. Taxpayers pay on the front end for subsidies…and then again on the backend while special interests get rich.

Dem politicians speak about helping the “little guy” - total hogwash. If anything its the other way around.
Heres a link to Solar farm credits, $50k per acre…I don’t know how accurate it is…maybe someone here does…

Americanexperiment.org

 

[Rifleman86]

I’ve read through all the posts in this thread and I normally don’t get involved in topics like this, but I’ll chime in just to give a little bit of a different perspective.

I find it interesting that the post mentions that it is absolutely disgusting to see that the solar farms are causing hundreds, if not thousands of habitat and hunting of opportunity destroyed. Based upon the title of the post calling out solar farms and the images included showing only those solar farms, it seems like solar farms are the only thing that is worth getting upset about.

However, in the same post it is called out that there is a massive and sprawling warehouse district. Not to negatively call out the OP, but where are the photos of the warehouse district or sprawl that has destroyed all the acreage of habitat hunting opportunity? Where are the pictures of all the shopping plazas or the thousands of tract homes that have been built over top of farmland or clearcut forests? I’m curious to hear how much the landscape has changes from sprawl and development that he’s seen from above over his time flying.

Because sprawl happens so frequently, yet gradually in terms of smaller pieces of land, I think many of us are no longer shocked or appalled when it happens. Most of us just accept it as something that will always take place and we shrug our shoulders when we see a strip mall going up on the edge of town or a new road expansion heading further out. In just a few years, what was once considered to be rural or on the outskirts of town, is no longer considered that, as sprawl and development has taken over several more square miles, and this perpetuates over and over again over decades.

In my uninformed opinion, sprawl should be a much larger topic of discussion in terms long term sustainability for the various ecologies, which destroys habitat and hunting opportunities. Yet, I don’t often hear people calling out “Where the **** are our conservation organizations on this!?” when it comes to sprawl.

Once a large piece of land is cut up into much smaller parcels and sold off to numerous individuals, many times the individuals want to build on it and “improve” it. The original, broader chunk of land will almost never return to its natural state as there are too many people who own a little bit and have a small interest in it. I’m yet to hear of a small to large scale city in the history of the world where a government, company or individual buys up a large sums of small parcels and converts that land back to its natural habitat by tearing down buildings and ripping up sewers systems, concrete foundations and roads.

I am not an expert on the matter but I would venture to guess that sprawl and development has likely
destroyed more habitat and hunting opportunities than anything else in North America. While I’m not a fan huge solar farms taking up potential habit for wildlife, it is likely much less impactful than subdividing the land into hundreds or thousands of smaller parcels sold to various individuals and pouring concrete building foundations and roads for tract homes and malls. Solar farms are a hot topic because when they are established as it does seem to affect a large piece of land almost overnight.

However, If sprawl prevention is not focused on, society as a whole is going to continue to spread out and rural land is going to be more and more developed. The development in this country may continue to sprawl out over the next decades and centuries until there is very little land left to develop (and for wildlife) which would be a HUGE loss of habitat and hunting opportunities.

I don’t know what the solution is, but perhaps there should be a push for cities to build up rather than out and it should be more prioritized by hunters and conservation organizations. I’m not an expert, but I think that this might be one of the few long term ways to retain some of the remaining habitat and hunting opportunities.

Just to note, while my response may seem like this an attack on the OP, please know that it is not my intention. I am not trying to get in any arguments or personal attacks. I think the OP has raised a valid point and I don’t disagree with him. I just used his post as a way to identify how we (myself included) often times overlook the (in my opinion) much worse gradual sprawl that is so badly destroying habitat and hunting opportunities, and we perhaps should focus on this more.

Valid points, and to be clear sprawl bothers me just as much as solar farms with regards to habitat destruction.

That said people need places to live, work, etc in modern society. In a sense, sprawl is certainly a necessary evil. To me, population growth and limited resources is a concern, but that has to be balanced with the fact we are and always should be a free society.

I think my biggest issue with solar farms is it seems to be largely unnecessary habitat destruction, and further it’s being subsidized by the government.

If the government was just subsidizing let’s say, solar panels on every warehouse roof, I think that would be a pretty rational thing to do.

Bottom line, let’s minimize our impact to habitat in every way possible.

 

[wnelson14]

Everyone keeps mentioning solar government subsidies, but isn’t most all midwestern corn and soybean farms subsidized?

 

[HuntHarder]

Everyone keeps mentioning solar government subsidies, but isn’t most all midwestern corn and soybean farms subsidized?

Only around 16-22 billion $'s a year. LOL

 

[MattB]

Two relevant data points to keep in mind when determining one's degree of indignation over covering hundreds if not thousands of acres of farmland with solar:
* Bill Gates is the largest owner of farmland in the US, owning just under 270,000 acres.
* His ownership represents 0.027% of total farmland in the US.

 

[mcseal2]

A solar company from Chicago tried to buy our ranch and several surrounding ones a few years back. They offered about 2.5x the average price at the time for pasture land here. A big power line runs just south of us that they could tie into, and one of the other ranches they wanted has a big substation on it. Luckily everyone told them no.

The people that gave a presentation for the solar company at a county zoning meeting I attended were totally unprepared to answer any questions. Our area does controlled burns every spring to keep all the grassland from growing up in trees. Our prairies have burned for centuries due to lightning, today ranchers try to manage the fires so they keep the trees mainly confined to the creek bottoms and draws and the prairie doesn't become all cedar trees. It makes a good ecosystem that fits both game and livestock. The solar company planned to manage fire by having a sprinkler system under the entire facility. They also wanted to run organic farming and sheep on the solar farm. They had no plan on how to do any of this, and had done no research. Those were apparently the slogans their marketing company said would help their cause.

They wanted to hook it all up to the counties rural water, the county's water system has no water to spare as it is. They had no answer when asked about spraying noxious weeds on neighboring properties (Sericea Lespedeza will take over and choke out our Big Bluestem native grass if not controlled). They had no answer on what type of fencing they planned to install to hold sheep, the century old 5 wire stuff won't do it. There were many other questions asked they had no answer to.

Ranchers I know in other parts of the state are running into issues now with land they leased for wind farms that are aging and needing replaced. I heard on a podcast from a guy who said he spend a decade installing wind farms that the average life expectancy of a wind generator is 21 years. The average time it takes one to break even without subsidies is 37 years.

I'm not against green energy if the technology makes sense for the application. If I was to build a new house today I'd build it off grid with it's own solar and wind system. If anyone here is thinking of selling or leasing land to a solar or wind company though, or knows someone who is, I'd have a lawyer familiar with that type of contract review it for you. I think the money may look good up front, but on the back side the companies have already received their subsidies and are not going to help clean up any of the worn out equipment left behind. When things sound to good to be true they usually are.

 

[PA farmboy]

Those solar companies offer stupid money for the leases as well, I have been offered over 1200 an acre per year by a couple different companies. Not about to even consider doing it, hard to feed the world when the farmable land is under panels!

 

[HuntHarder]

Nothing wrong with a diverse energy portfolio, it actually has the potential to keep the cost of electricity more stable. The problem lies in mandate time frames and %'s of renewables.

 

[Beendare]

From my link above;

Companies would not be building solar if not for the lavish taxpayer subsidies and the ability for government-approved utilities to simply raise the cost of power on the ratepayers to finance them.
This means our federal and state governments are essentially forcing the rest of us to finance the removal of productive farmland from production in exchange for solar panels that produce only 18 percent of their potential output.

This is why the ‘Future Agriculture Retention and Management Act,” or FARM act, proposed by Wisconsin congressman Tom Tiffany (WI-7), which would eliminate energy tax incentives that help finance green energy sources such as solar panels or wind arrays if such projects result in the loss of farmland, is a good idea.

The FARM Act wouldn’t get rid of subsidies altogether. It would simply remove the generous $50,000 per acre subsidies that are being used to take our Midwestern farmland out of the business of producing the food we put on our tables.

 

[cuerro viejo]

And who do you think will pay to clean thatup in 20years when the panels are no good and it costs more to retro fit- the taxpayers.
Look, some solar is a good idea…but the ”All renewable” crowd needs to look at the history of these highly incentivized projects ( solar subsidies are huge)
Search deactivated wind farms…there is one they couldn’t get to pencil in one of the windiest places on earth in Hawaii- its a rotting boneyard scar on the land.

Corporations walk away from these mines, and sites like this all thetime…with the taxpayer holding the bag.

I blame our current gov. Those Democrat idiots are giving subsidies of $50,000 an acre to install solar. its the new gold rush. Do they make you post a bond to insure the cleanup- nope. The Dems are just shovelling money to these big outfits…and historically they become Superfund sites many years from now. Taxpayers pay on the front end for subsidies…and then again on the backend while special interests get rich.

Dem politicians speak about helping the “little guy” - total hogwash. If anything its the other way around.
Heres a link to Solar farm credits, $50k per acre…I don’t know how accurate it is…maybe someone here does…

Americanexperiment.org

arguing over if a Reclaimation bond attached to the contract will still be valid is dumb, arguing if it will be enough is valid.

regardless we cant argue either because none of us are privileged to individual, Petro, wind or solar contracts. Private landowners need to be smart.

you are right subs need to be gone

 

[Beendare]

arguing over if a Reclaimation bond attached to the contract will still be valid is dumb, arguing if it will be enough is valid.

regardless we cant argue either because none of us are privileged to individual, Petro, wind or solar contracts. Private landowners need to be smart.

you are right subs need to be gone

Yeah, do a search on these superfund sites and you will be appalled.

I hunted an area of Co that I spent years talking to the county, the state gov, the EPA...its like talking to a wall- nobody did anything except admit it should be a superfund site.

I talked to the miner- cozing up to him for info I could possibly use against him...and he was a disgusting individual. He claimed the federal land for almost nothing [and was bragging about it] mined it for a few years and then folded the corporation so no one would come back on him. He left the place a total wreck with junk everywhere, barrels on Cyanide there leaking on the property that work their way into the creek above a main town.

This solar panels covering the landscape has a similar stink to it. Make them post a bond with a personal guarantee for the potential clean up....the climate weinies left their business acumen at the door with this.

Heck, Warren Buffet himself just stated in his yearly Berkshire filing----in not so many words...that the Biden Admin is a bunch of idiots.

 

[Rifleman86]

This thread has gone exactly how I figured it would once the left wing partisans got on their high horses.

Whether they're doing it consciously or not, they're engaging in a motte and bailey fallacy. Where they're faced with a bailey (an indefensible position like the government paying companies to destroy habitat and farmland while 99% of warehouse roofs, parking lots, etc go un utilized), and when faced with push back they retreat to their motte (an easily defended position like saying coal is bad for the environment).

Its an extraordinarily dishonest way to argue, but virtue signalers love it because they can tell themselves that they're sticking up for something noble when they're actually defending something terrible.

 

[JjamesIII]

I'm a carpenter at a large construction company and do large structural concrete stuff. The company I work for also happens to be big into solar work. Just started a 4k acre solar job in Illinois. Anyone comparing reclaimed coal mines to reclaiming solar field just doesn't get it. A 4k acre field with thousands on thousands of micro pile drove in the ground is gonna be an absolute nightmare to reclaim

It’s funny that these jag-off political science major’s scope of knowledge is all based off of what a paid lobbyist feeds them in a briefing. If Joe and his crowd of woke people want to really know what impacts they are making, they’d ask the people like us that are intimately knowledgeable in how these things are made. Talk to construction guys, engineers, actual field biologist instead of staying in dc getting money filtered lobbyist slant on what bill to sign that’ll fulfill the campaign donation obligations. People just virtue signal anything with a green label and don’t look at it objectively.

 

[Andrew12gauge]

Valid points, and to be clear sprawl bothers me just as much as solar farms with regards to habitat destruction.

That said people need places to live, work, etc in modern society. In a sense, sprawl is certainly a necessary evil. To me, population growth and limited resources is a concern, but that has to be balanced with the fact we are and always should be a free society.

I think my biggest issue with solar farms is it seems to be largely unnecessary habitat destruction, and further it’s being subsidized by the government.

If the government was just subsidizing let’s say, solar panels on every warehouse roof, I think that would be a pretty rational thing to do.

Bottom line, let’s minimize our impact to habitat in every way possible.

I think you missed his most important point and it was a long post so I guess you can be forgiven for that. Whether we have a growing world population or not, and we need places to live/work/etc or not was never in question, but like he said it is time for our cities to start building up rather than out. Way too much land, time, money and water is wasted on postage stamp yards on every .25 acre lot in this country, all so we can keep up with the Jones’. For a large portion of the population, it would be better if we built more high density housing, condominiums, apartments and the like.

Personally I would rather live in a high rise condo building and have places to recreate that are truly wild than have every bit of available land eaten up to build more subdivisions

 

[Rifleman86]

I think you missed his most important point and it was a long post so I guess you can be forgiven for that. Whether we have a growing world population or not, and we need places to live/work/etc or not was never in question, but like he said it is time for our cities to start building up rather than out. Way too much land, time, money and water is wasted on postage stamp yards on every .25 acre lot in this country, all so we can keep up with the Jones’. For a large portion of the population, it would be better if we built more high density housing, condominiums, apartments and the like.

Personally I would rather live in a high rise condo building and have places to recreate that are truly wild than have every bit of available land eaten up to build more subdivisions

No I think you have an important point. However how do he balance that need for conservation with the fact we are (and always should be) a free society.

That will naturally happen if more property is enrolled in conservation easements. Where I live most houses are on 5-20 acre lots. It still leaves plenty of space for habitat, and hunting opportunities.

But yeah, the cookie cutter neighborhood of .25 acres is an inefficient way to house people with regards to habitat.

But back to the topic at hand, we shouldn’t be subsidizing destroying farmland and habitat for low efficiency per acres means of energy production like solar. Rooftops and parking lots? Sure. But let’s start with just not incentivizing stuff that is bad for habitat. It seems pretty common sense.

 

[Beendare]

Fact; the midwest grid operator PJM came out with a report warning the current Administration proposals of retiring fossil fuel power plants for renewable will leave us short on power.

PJM Details Resource Retirements, Replacements and Risks | PJM Inside Lines

insidelines.pjm.com

LINK

From the report;
Overall, the amount of generation retirements appears to be more certain than the timely arrival of replacement generation resources and demand response, given that the quantity of retirements is codified in various policy objectives, while the impacts to the pace of new entry of the Inflation Reduction Act, post-pandemic supply chain issues, and other externalities are still not fully understood. Should these trends continue, PJM could face decreasing reserve margins for the first time in its history.
———
It speaks to hack environmentalists and the current admin pushing an agenda without actually doing the math. <exasperated face palm>