Imagine being a third or fourth generation farmer in say Idaho or Oklahoma. The wind regimes are “robust” and the sun shines and the ground is relatively flat and the soil fertile. Maybe, you have a cattle ranch or dairy farm. As you watch the diminishing returns on your “cash” crops, and taxes are going up, costs are much higher every year than the current rate of inflation; a bright young developer with a colleague say from the new equivalent of GE Capital show up and say “hey hayseed, have we got a deal for you!” For the next several weeks as you operate a 1 million dollar piece of farm equipment (one wheel and tire cost $25k) and you’re in the isolated cab for 8 hours a day, it comes to you, over time that the utility scale solar array or 2 or 3 utility scale wind turbine generators and their lease payments for the next 20 years make a lot of sense. The revenue may even help you save the family farm for the next generation. What the slick salesman and investment banker with the designer boots and thin watches didn’t tell you was how much it was all going to cost. They didn’t tell you about shadow flicker, or that dirty dust covered solar panels don’t work so well and at the end of 20 years after they pulled all the money out of the project in the first five years and back leveraged the project to the hilt, and selling it down to the next more than stupid bunch of investment bankers, is that the wind turbines or solar arrays are on your land and they have no interest in how you deal with them when the whole mess goes bust, or a WTG catches on fire and topples to the ground. Or, how the ISO of choice is really going to deal with the lousy power they are getting from the project. All because someone far away in a coastal capital (east or west pick your poison) needs to feel good about themself. Their self loathing despite being billionaires now, won’t go away, so they want YOU dear farmer to add one more item to the long list of things to worry about today. No PTC’s, no ITC’s, no tax “equity” no dummies with money to burn on intermittent power generation, than no “renewable” power generation. But fear not, two new Gen X mid wits just told me that the Gulf of Maine is the wind equivalent of the country of oil rich Saudi Arabia! Throttles to the fore wall everyone. There’s gold in that water, and it ain’t lobster or scallops.
Saw this coming with Agrivoltaics. Sacrificing food security for energy is not good policy. Either raise the solar arrays on tall enough towers to give ground clearance or not at all
Or put it in as vertical panels between rows / as wind breaks between fields.
Vertical bifacial E-W produces slightly less than traditional south facing angled panels, but it produces at higher value hours when there is significant amounts of solar in the system.
Expose the sold power to market rates instead of fixed price per volume PPAs and this would be far more common.
Unless co-located with other infrastructure, vertical setups makes no sense because you would need a minimum of 14ft clearance from ground to the bottom of your arrays to accommodate tractors and harvesters. Needless to mention the shading effect it has on crop types that require adequate sunlight. The best scenario I'm working on mounts a PV array overtop an irrigation water storage tank which provides dc power to a 500°C pipeline heater combined with a 5000m geothermal well to drive a 12MW steam turbine for combined heat, power and water system. The total ground footprint is 58sqft. Whichever way you slice it, solar just doesn't make sense otherwise.
Why would you need clearance that high. If rows the tractor goes between panel rows, not under them. They need to clear the crop only.
Even less impact at the field edge for windbreaks.(a half mile / 800m long wind break that is 3m high at 25% would generate 600kW nameplate. That's not insubstantial.
They've raised the panels in a few fields in Montana and the Netherlands, but it's still not a very attractive scene - I'd much rather see the beauty of conventional cropland farmland.
Robert you are exactly right. This is terrible policy. Essentially taking over 1 million acres of arable land out of production equates to a reduction of ~ 56m bushels of wheat or some other food crop. Driving up the cost of both food and energy. It’s easy to forget that 100 years ago people were starving in NA.
Presumably, cleanup would be in the contract, but you're right - there's a very good chance that the solar companies won't be around to fulfill their agreement, or they won't have the money to do it, and the farmer will get stuck with it.
Cleanup is in the leases. Very little land is purchased. However all of the solar and wind developers are Limited liability corporations, owned by other LLC’s owned by other LLC’s owned by some off shore entity no one has ever heard of. They can cut and run at any time and no one will ever track down the actual owner. These projects get sold and resold before they are even operable, introducing another level of multiple LLCs. As soon as the subsidy ends or the panels need replacing many of these solar and wind farms will just be abandoned. Look no further than Altamont pass in California where the rusting hulks of the abandoned 70s era tax credit driven wind machines still litter the landscape.
Ian Braithwaite has the right idea by requiring a bond. I’m no lawyer, but maybe it can be secured by an escrow or financial institution to guarantee performance. ??
thanks for the update. the current climate zeitgeist seems like it is designed to destroy the long-term capabilities of our civilization. destroying food capacity in a world short of food net seems a mistake.
Very good piece, gents. I live in Chisago county and I almost cry that farmers are being tricked into subsidies for covering our most fertile farmland with toxic panels! Farmers will be stuck with the bill to remove these things once they stop working. It is disgusting.
Google map my county and look at all the destruction with these panels.
As a property owner that has a solar lease for 300 acres in Northern Illinois, I too am concerned about the end of life use of worn out solar panels. My lease agreement took 6 months to negotiate and has the provisions for a Bond to be issued for the eventual cleanup effort to take place if the panels are ever removed. I have also considered creating an additional fund to be used in the event that my heirs wish to farm my property once again. I trust that over time technology will address the toxic waste concerns of solar panels and actually make it a non issue. I also have concerns about removing prime farmland out of production as solar farms are created, I feel that working from a LESA score ( Land Evaluation and Site Assesment) would create an environment whereby more marginal land could be utilized. My property falls into class B soils and has transmission line towers cutting across the middle of it. Probably a perfect choice for a solar farm. I witnessed hundreds of shopping centers go up in the Chicagoland area in the 70's and 80's, many of which took prime farmland out of production. My final thoughts are that if ground can produce a crop that is average or above, it should be protected; average or below could if desired, be developed. Solar Farms should fall into the latter category. Just a final note; I purchased 3 adjoining farms over my lifetime by working both a full time job and working on the farm. I am single, no children, and do not come from a farm family. A decision to enter into a solar lease as I retire seems a perfect choice. Just saying.
I understand your point about marginal land. And congratulation on being able to cash in on this trend. However, until we have covered all these malls you referenced with solar panels why would we entertain using any bare land at all. If not economical for agriculture could still provide grazing or recreational green spaces. Also, what happens to all the native grass shaded under 300 acres of glass? Whats the long term effect on the soil?
Solar power has issues from Cradle to Grave and it would not exist without subsidies. Just wait though, because I'm sure there are more subsidies coming to RECYCLE the panels. NOBODY is recycling panels in any quantity because it is expensive and labor intensive. Meanwhile, around 90% of retired solar panels are going to landfills. This green energy folly is going to get more expensive. It isn't "Clean", "Cheap" OR "Reliable". I'm curious how many solar farms were damaged by the recent hurricanes. That isn't something the mainstream media wants to report on....
But many of the manufactures here in the good old US are Chinese companies!!!! They stole our technology (and Germany's) and then sold us back crap and it is getting worse! 83% of panels have line cracks and micro cracks according to CEA, compared to 2-3 years ago when they were at 20%.
Would the CCP even think twice about the welfare of those Chinese companies if cutting them off from supplies would result in control of the US?
Also, remember the Dutch "white hat hacker" who demonstrated that those Chinese solar collectors could be disabled remotely, potentially leading to a "black start" event.
These prices are consistent with prices in Texas - though they are getting higher as you get closer to the cities and that is where they are building now. Mainly because of transmission and flatter farmland. Also better farmland, unfortunately. I've been working on the 10 acres/MW, after doing breakdowns of solar leases from the CH 313 files it was 8-11 acres depending on terrain. Solar likes to say 6 acres - maybe just the cover with panels?
We currently have about 250,000 acres under solar with an ERCOT interconnect list of about 1,500,000 acres in the wings fro development. That means all that acreage is leased, at the nominal rates of course not the higher production rates. Fortunately it will still be in producton until it is developed.
That's not counting wind.... just solar!
Back to the old say - money talks! And farm income is down 24% this year to date!
One consequence of the IRA being repealed (which I am all for!) will be that these sites will be abandoned quicker and left to the local landowners and the counties to clean up! Bonds are only worth the paper they are written on, and here they don't have to put one up for 10 years! Many owners say they have them written into their contracts, but when told how much it would cost today to decommission they fall silent... oops!
Thank you EBBs, or I guess EBB this week. I love your article and agree emotionally with your conclusions. Here in the UK the new Labour government has realised that winning the election was a ghastly mistake and is doing its best to prevent recurrence. One of their tactics has been to overrule planning advice and permit large solar farms on prime agricultural land.
As a Classical Liberal I'm against big government and subsidies, which benefit special interests while socialising cost. (I'm also against them as I don't receive any - I do have other principles.) However, and this is something folk should be deeply thankful for, I'm not running the show.
What I feel is missing from your article is comparisons, so I'll throw in something: from an energy point of view (neglecting all other very valid considerations, some raised in the other comments): which is more productive, crops or solar panels? So as to avoid marketing BS I've used the performance of my own solar panels located on my roof at an unfavourable 52.9 degrees north, with a local cloud factory. Over the past 12 months, their average power density has been 17.3 watts/square metre and capacity factor 9.8%. According to the late David Mackay's book, downloadable for free here: https://www.withouthotair.com/ crops such as willow, poplar and miscanthus, grown for energy, capture around 0.5 watts/square metre - then you have to get that energy out, with losses. So from this narrow perspective, this use/misuse of land doesn't look that stupid, at least by government standards.
The other comparison that's missing is subsidies for farming in the USA, about which I know precisely nothing. Farming is subsidised in the EU, controversially so, and in the UK. I'll close by sharing this gem: The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in 2018 announced "its intention to adopt the principle of ‘public money for public goods’, whereby farmers and other land managers will be paid for delivering (primarily) environmental benefits rather than the amount of land they farm. The government argued that direct payments were a poor use of public money". The UK government evidently assigns a lot lower priority to eating than I do, so maybe the same goes for the administration in Washington.
Super valid points. I would add there is already 💩 loads of subsidies in agriculture. The farm bill, CRP, forestry programs, livestock subsidies for drought and flooding, and my favorite payment for lost cattle killed by the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado. The whole FN house of cards is a subsidy. We need a constitutional convention and a draining of the swamp. The popularty contest to see which party or candidate can offer more freebies has bubbled over and the insanity has to stop. Took around 60 years for it to get this screwed up, gonna take some sacrifices and guts to fix it. How much is the subsidy if you can calculate it minus the current subsidies? Too FN complicated!
A few other points that I do not see. The Production Tax Credit pays money regardless of the actual amount of electricity created. This creates economic incentives to put solar plants in areas of relatively low amounts of solar radiance, such as the Upper Midwest and Northeast.
The PTC also pays regardless of whether the electricity is actually used, so when the electricity is curtailed due to no demand, they still get the money.
This creates terrible economic incentives. I think it should be abolished, along with all other energy subsidies, but at the very least the amount of the credit should be based on the actual electricity produced and consumed in the local geographical area.
The amount of critical habitat for threatened and endangered species being razed for solar, along with water--also part of that critical habitat, in the desert southwest is utterly heartbreaking. The desert tortoise may well be completely wiped out by solar. Hundreds year-old joshua, yucca, and sagebrush are being mowed down. It is a crime.
Imagine being a third or fourth generation farmer in say Idaho or Oklahoma. The wind regimes are “robust” and the sun shines and the ground is relatively flat and the soil fertile. Maybe, you have a cattle ranch or dairy farm. As you watch the diminishing returns on your “cash” crops, and taxes are going up, costs are much higher every year than the current rate of inflation; a bright young developer with a colleague say from the new equivalent of GE Capital show up and say “hey hayseed, have we got a deal for you!” For the next several weeks as you operate a 1 million dollar piece of farm equipment (one wheel and tire cost $25k) and you’re in the isolated cab for 8 hours a day, it comes to you, over time that the utility scale solar array or 2 or 3 utility scale wind turbine generators and their lease payments for the next 20 years make a lot of sense. The revenue may even help you save the family farm for the next generation. What the slick salesman and investment banker with the designer boots and thin watches didn’t tell you was how much it was all going to cost. They didn’t tell you about shadow flicker, or that dirty dust covered solar panels don’t work so well and at the end of 20 years after they pulled all the money out of the project in the first five years and back leveraged the project to the hilt, and selling it down to the next more than stupid bunch of investment bankers, is that the wind turbines or solar arrays are on your land and they have no interest in how you deal with them when the whole mess goes bust, or a WTG catches on fire and topples to the ground. Or, how the ISO of choice is really going to deal with the lousy power they are getting from the project. All because someone far away in a coastal capital (east or west pick your poison) needs to feel good about themself. Their self loathing despite being billionaires now, won’t go away, so they want YOU dear farmer to add one more item to the long list of things to worry about today. No PTC’s, no ITC’s, no tax “equity” no dummies with money to burn on intermittent power generation, than no “renewable” power generation. But fear not, two new Gen X mid wits just told me that the Gulf of Maine is the wind equivalent of the country of oil rich Saudi Arabia! Throttles to the fore wall everyone. There’s gold in that water, and it ain’t lobster or scallops.
You nailed it!
They made me an offer and I REFUSED
You're my hero.
Saw this coming with Agrivoltaics. Sacrificing food security for energy is not good policy. Either raise the solar arrays on tall enough towers to give ground clearance or not at all
Or put it in as vertical panels between rows / as wind breaks between fields.
Vertical bifacial E-W produces slightly less than traditional south facing angled panels, but it produces at higher value hours when there is significant amounts of solar in the system.
Expose the sold power to market rates instead of fixed price per volume PPAs and this would be far more common.
I've heard of vertical setups - are there any good examples, and any unintended consequences? Would like to know a little more about it...
Unless co-located with other infrastructure, vertical setups makes no sense because you would need a minimum of 14ft clearance from ground to the bottom of your arrays to accommodate tractors and harvesters. Needless to mention the shading effect it has on crop types that require adequate sunlight. The best scenario I'm working on mounts a PV array overtop an irrigation water storage tank which provides dc power to a 500°C pipeline heater combined with a 5000m geothermal well to drive a 12MW steam turbine for combined heat, power and water system. The total ground footprint is 58sqft. Whichever way you slice it, solar just doesn't make sense otherwise.
Sounds like you have a neat setup there.
Correction, 871.96 Sqft ground area of a mounted tank. Quite a far cry from a 4-5acre farmland of 1MW solar capacity.
Why would you need clearance that high. If rows the tractor goes between panel rows, not under them. They need to clear the crop only.
Even less impact at the field edge for windbreaks.(a half mile / 800m long wind break that is 3m high at 25% would generate 600kW nameplate. That's not insubstantial.
They've raised the panels in a few fields in Montana and the Netherlands, but it's still not a very attractive scene - I'd much rather see the beauty of conventional cropland farmland.
You're right - we need food security.
Robert you are exactly right. This is terrible policy. Essentially taking over 1 million acres of arable land out of production equates to a reduction of ~ 56m bushels of wheat or some other food crop. Driving up the cost of both food and energy. It’s easy to forget that 100 years ago people were starving in NA.
It's all fun and games for the farmer until the time to dispose of the panels comes due..
He'll be left with a huge clean up bill and the lessee will be no where to be found financially...
Presumably, cleanup would be in the contract, but you're right - there's a very good chance that the solar companies won't be around to fulfill their agreement, or they won't have the money to do it, and the farmer will get stuck with it.
Cleanup is in the leases. Very little land is purchased. However all of the solar and wind developers are Limited liability corporations, owned by other LLC’s owned by other LLC’s owned by some off shore entity no one has ever heard of. They can cut and run at any time and no one will ever track down the actual owner. These projects get sold and resold before they are even operable, introducing another level of multiple LLCs. As soon as the subsidy ends or the panels need replacing many of these solar and wind farms will just be abandoned. Look no further than Altamont pass in California where the rusting hulks of the abandoned 70s era tax credit driven wind machines still litter the landscape.
Ian Braithwaite has the right idea by requiring a bond. I’m no lawyer, but maybe it can be secured by an escrow or financial institution to guarantee performance. ??
I’ve got a better idea. Don’t build unreliable power systems on farmland! Full stop.
Agreed.
This is why the total decommissioning funds should be placed in a third-party trust fund at the start of the project.
thanks for the update. the current climate zeitgeist seems like it is designed to destroy the long-term capabilities of our civilization. destroying food capacity in a world short of food net seems a mistake.
Very good piece, gents. I live in Chisago county and I almost cry that farmers are being tricked into subsidies for covering our most fertile farmland with toxic panels! Farmers will be stuck with the bill to remove these things once they stop working. It is disgusting.
Google map my county and look at all the destruction with these panels.
As a property owner that has a solar lease for 300 acres in Northern Illinois, I too am concerned about the end of life use of worn out solar panels. My lease agreement took 6 months to negotiate and has the provisions for a Bond to be issued for the eventual cleanup effort to take place if the panels are ever removed. I have also considered creating an additional fund to be used in the event that my heirs wish to farm my property once again. I trust that over time technology will address the toxic waste concerns of solar panels and actually make it a non issue. I also have concerns about removing prime farmland out of production as solar farms are created, I feel that working from a LESA score ( Land Evaluation and Site Assesment) would create an environment whereby more marginal land could be utilized. My property falls into class B soils and has transmission line towers cutting across the middle of it. Probably a perfect choice for a solar farm. I witnessed hundreds of shopping centers go up in the Chicagoland area in the 70's and 80's, many of which took prime farmland out of production. My final thoughts are that if ground can produce a crop that is average or above, it should be protected; average or below could if desired, be developed. Solar Farms should fall into the latter category. Just a final note; I purchased 3 adjoining farms over my lifetime by working both a full time job and working on the farm. I am single, no children, and do not come from a farm family. A decision to enter into a solar lease as I retire seems a perfect choice. Just saying.
Thank you for your perspective as a farmer. Having a bond to secure the cost of cleanup is an excellent idea.
I understand your point about marginal land. And congratulation on being able to cash in on this trend. However, until we have covered all these malls you referenced with solar panels why would we entertain using any bare land at all. If not economical for agriculture could still provide grazing or recreational green spaces. Also, what happens to all the native grass shaded under 300 acres of glass? Whats the long term effect on the soil?
Very wise, Lee
Solar power has issues from Cradle to Grave and it would not exist without subsidies. Just wait though, because I'm sure there are more subsidies coming to RECYCLE the panels. NOBODY is recycling panels in any quantity because it is expensive and labor intensive. Meanwhile, around 90% of retired solar panels are going to landfills. This green energy folly is going to get more expensive. It isn't "Clean", "Cheap" OR "Reliable". I'm curious how many solar farms were damaged by the recent hurricanes. That isn't something the mainstream media wants to report on....
Here is an article you might like:
Hail Marys and Shattered Dreams: An Avalanche of Solar Panels Coming Soon to a Landfill Near You
https://open.substack.com/pub/tucoschild/p/hail-marys-and-shattered-dreams-an?r=2mh23j&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
This article is over two years old, and not much has changed.....
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-14/california-rooftop-solar-pv-panels-recycling-danger#:~:text=California%20went%20big%20on%20rooftop,already%20winding%20up%20in%20landfills.
Great points!
I wish our state leaders in Mass. could do the math on the greenwashing of solar.
Sacrificing agriculture for solar is ludicrous.
USA is as bad as China, which destroyed 10 high-quality USA Solar companies after the 2008 Crash, with high subsidies to their Solar companies.
In 2009, China drove Solar panel prices down 80% and the Yanks couldn’t compete.
What would world prices be in a true Free Enterprise system?
What would prices be once we become dependent on Chinese solar collectors and batteries?
https://www.therightinsight.org/Chinas-Long-Game
Things may not be so jolly in China just now: https://www.economist.com/business/2024/06/17/chinas-giant-solar-industry-is-in-turmoil
But many of the manufactures here in the good old US are Chinese companies!!!! They stole our technology (and Germany's) and then sold us back crap and it is getting worse! 83% of panels have line cracks and micro cracks according to CEA, compared to 2-3 years ago when they were at 20%.
Would the CCP even think twice about the welfare of those Chinese companies if cutting them off from supplies would result in control of the US?
Also, remember the Dutch "white hat hacker" who demonstrated that those Chinese solar collectors could be disabled remotely, potentially leading to a "black start" event.
These prices are consistent with prices in Texas - though they are getting higher as you get closer to the cities and that is where they are building now. Mainly because of transmission and flatter farmland. Also better farmland, unfortunately. I've been working on the 10 acres/MW, after doing breakdowns of solar leases from the CH 313 files it was 8-11 acres depending on terrain. Solar likes to say 6 acres - maybe just the cover with panels?
We currently have about 250,000 acres under solar with an ERCOT interconnect list of about 1,500,000 acres in the wings fro development. That means all that acreage is leased, at the nominal rates of course not the higher production rates. Fortunately it will still be in producton until it is developed.
That's not counting wind.... just solar!
Back to the old say - money talks! And farm income is down 24% this year to date!
One consequence of the IRA being repealed (which I am all for!) will be that these sites will be abandoned quicker and left to the local landowners and the counties to clean up! Bonds are only worth the paper they are written on, and here they don't have to put one up for 10 years! Many owners say they have them written into their contracts, but when told how much it would cost today to decommission they fall silent... oops!
Good article as always guys!
Thank you EBBs, or I guess EBB this week. I love your article and agree emotionally with your conclusions. Here in the UK the new Labour government has realised that winning the election was a ghastly mistake and is doing its best to prevent recurrence. One of their tactics has been to overrule planning advice and permit large solar farms on prime agricultural land.
As a Classical Liberal I'm against big government and subsidies, which benefit special interests while socialising cost. (I'm also against them as I don't receive any - I do have other principles.) However, and this is something folk should be deeply thankful for, I'm not running the show.
What I feel is missing from your article is comparisons, so I'll throw in something: from an energy point of view (neglecting all other very valid considerations, some raised in the other comments): which is more productive, crops or solar panels? So as to avoid marketing BS I've used the performance of my own solar panels located on my roof at an unfavourable 52.9 degrees north, with a local cloud factory. Over the past 12 months, their average power density has been 17.3 watts/square metre and capacity factor 9.8%. According to the late David Mackay's book, downloadable for free here: https://www.withouthotair.com/ crops such as willow, poplar and miscanthus, grown for energy, capture around 0.5 watts/square metre - then you have to get that energy out, with losses. So from this narrow perspective, this use/misuse of land doesn't look that stupid, at least by government standards.
The other comparison that's missing is subsidies for farming in the USA, about which I know precisely nothing. Farming is subsidised in the EU, controversially so, and in the UK. I'll close by sharing this gem: The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in 2018 announced "its intention to adopt the principle of ‘public money for public goods’, whereby farmers and other land managers will be paid for delivering (primarily) environmental benefits rather than the amount of land they farm. The government argued that direct payments were a poor use of public money". The UK government evidently assigns a lot lower priority to eating than I do, so maybe the same goes for the administration in Washington.
Subsidies dictate behavior. When subsidies arise from irrational energy politics, behavior and subesequent outcome will be irrational.
Super valid points. I would add there is already 💩 loads of subsidies in agriculture. The farm bill, CRP, forestry programs, livestock subsidies for drought and flooding, and my favorite payment for lost cattle killed by the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado. The whole FN house of cards is a subsidy. We need a constitutional convention and a draining of the swamp. The popularty contest to see which party or candidate can offer more freebies has bubbled over and the insanity has to stop. Took around 60 years for it to get this screwed up, gonna take some sacrifices and guts to fix it. How much is the subsidy if you can calculate it minus the current subsidies? Too FN complicated!
Great article.
A few other points that I do not see. The Production Tax Credit pays money regardless of the actual amount of electricity created. This creates economic incentives to put solar plants in areas of relatively low amounts of solar radiance, such as the Upper Midwest and Northeast.
The PTC also pays regardless of whether the electricity is actually used, so when the electricity is curtailed due to no demand, they still get the money.
This creates terrible economic incentives. I think it should be abolished, along with all other energy subsidies, but at the very least the amount of the credit should be based on the actual electricity produced and consumed in the local geographical area.
The amount of critical habitat for threatened and endangered species being razed for solar, along with water--also part of that critical habitat, in the desert southwest is utterly heartbreaking. The desert tortoise may well be completely wiped out by solar. Hundreds year-old joshua, yucca, and sagebrush are being mowed down. It is a crime.