Review of "Solar Power: Technology, Innovation and Environmental Justice."

[NNadir]

While wandering around in the literature this evening, I came across this review: Schlosser, K., Review of Solar Power: Technology, Innovation and Environmental Justice. Hum Ecol 47, 479–480 (2019).

The book reviewed is this one:

Dustin Mulvaney. Solar Power. Innovation, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice. Oakland, University of California Press 2019. ISBN 978-0-520-28817-1, Price $29.65 (paperback). 322

Here's a few excerpts of the review:

Dustin Mulvaney’s Solar Power: Innovation, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice provides a thorough overview of the California solar power industry. Mulvaney makes the purpose of such an overview clear at the outset: a transition to solar (among other renewable energy technologies) is underway, but this is not necessarily a just transition unless we make it so. In order to facilitate a just transition, certain questions must be answered. For Mulvaney, these include: “…who bears the burdens? Where might collateral effects manifest? How can these aspects be integrated into energy policy, planning, and practice?” (pp. 3–4). These are important questions in the realms of environmental and climate justiceFootnote1 and Mulvaney’s contribution towards addressing them is timely and useful.

Solar Power is densely packed with a wide range of information on solar power in California. The first four chapters of the book cover details of the industry, including technology, raw materials, the Silicon Valley start-ups and venture capital involved, government investment programs, and NGOs. Readers get an occasional excursion into more theoretical terrain, such as a discussion of the tension between justice and sustainability or debates about whether technology can be inherently political, but Mulvaney generally remains focused on the technology and industrial organization...

...From chapter five onward, however, Mulvaney begins to connect the industry overview to thornier policy questions a bit more explicitly. For instance, chapter five (Green Civil War) lays out four possible explanations for why solar projects might be resisted at the local level. These include a lack of consulting with communities on project implementation (‘democratic deficit’), the likelihood that views about solar projects are more nuanced than surveys can capture, an ‘insider-outsider’ dynamic wherein Big Solar is demonized, and the well known Not In My Back Yard phenomenon. Chapter six explores the U.S. federal government’s Western Solar Plan to identify potential solar energy zones (SEZs) to be converted into solar farms. The chapter provides excellent information on the potential ecological impacts of solar farms and a critical evaluation of the concepts of ‘solar debt’ and ‘GHGFootnote2 return on investment.’ In chapter seven (‘Breakthrough Technologies and Solar Trade Wars’) Mulvaney discusses federal policies to support risk-taking in solar power innovation and this is probably the most analytically nuanced portion of the book, as he situates these policies within debates about green developmentalism and eco-modernism. In short, Mulvaney points to the failure of a federal energy policy that is based on a laissez-fair, market approach with the government assuming the role of venture capitalist. Mulvaney does argue for public investment in clean energy, but in different (and rather underspecified) ways. He concludes the chapter by outlining three primary reasons why ARRA and DOE investment programs resulted in the Solyndra fiasco, and not more sufficient gains in solar power transition. First, they have emphasized pre-commercial technologies and a ‘black swan’ approach (in which a high number of projects are supported in hopes that even a small percentage of them are truly transformative), rather than improving upon solar technology that is already commercial. Second, Mulvaney suggests that these programs “assumed that ‘disruptive technologies’ had agency and would survive on their own in the market” (p. 243), as if solar panels were the same as iPads or flat screen televisions...

The review seemed interesting so I accessed the book.

I'm hardly going to find the time to read the whole thing, especially as it's about an industry I believe is useless and an expensive and ecologically dubious affectation with unwarranted public enthusiasm and popularity, but I was rather struck in a section about bird mortality at what is a personal bête noire, the solar thermal tragedy at Ivanpah, a huge plant over a large area that produces trivial energy and burns gas to pretend to be economically viable.

(In this text USSE refers to "Utility Scale Solar Energy." )

The text:

USFWS biologists coined the term “streamers” to describe birds singed by solar flux at the Ivanpah site, which is particularly problematic when it is above the power tower receiver while the plant is in standby mode. Later research from Ivanpah raised the bird death totals upwards, with just under half of the deaths due to the heat flux.20 One public letter, submitted by a USFWS chief biologist, asked that the CEC not approve any more solar power towers until data could be collected on the impacts of power towers on avian ecology. Unlike the challenges with tortoises, which can be avoided by siting projects on non-habitat, the solar power towers’ impacts on birds may be unavoidable.21...

... A wide variety of bird types have died at USSE plants.24 Two endan-gered Yuma clapper rails (Rallus longirostris yumanensis), a population with only a thousand living individuals, were killed at the Desert Sunlight facility in Desert Center, California. At two solar power plants in the California desert (one photovoltaic farm and one parabolic-trough CSP), over 20 birds associated with aquatic habitat—yellow-headed blackbirds (Xan-thocephalus xanthocephalus), great blue herons (Ardea herodias), eared grebes (Podiceps nigricollis), western grebes (Aechmophorus occidentalis), pied-billed grebes (Podilymbus podiceps), surf scoters (Melanitta perspi-cillata), red-breasted mergansers (Mergus serrator), buffleheads (Bucephala albeola), black-crowned night herons (Nycticorax nycticorax), double crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus), American coots (Fulica americana), and brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis)—were found dead, apparently due to colliding with panels and mirrors, far from any sources of water.25 Other species known to have avian-solar mortality include migratory birds such as the yellow warbler (Setophaga coronate), Vaux’s swift (Chaetura vauxi), and loggerhead shrike (Lanius ludovicianus), and raptors such as the American kestrel (Falco sparverius), red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamicensis), golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), northern harrier (Circus cyaneus), and peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus). Some USSE sites have on-site ponds that may attract such birds.

Polarized-light cues cause aquatic insects to lay their eggs on photovoltaic modules rather than in water, prompting some to argue for more research into how polarized light might affect insect, bat, and bird behavior near USSE installations, since water bodies are the only sources of polarized light in nature.26 Many renewable energy advocates minimize the consequences of USSE bird mortality by comparing it to other sources such as cats, buildings, and automobiles, but this comparison seems incommensurate given that the impacts are cumulative, not tradeoffs, and it does not distinguish between mortality of different types of birds...

I certainly don't know if modern day "environmentalism" finds birds to be all that important anymore, with the rush to industrialize the wilderness to charge up Elon Musk's Powerwall® products and Tesla cars so we can all drive around showing how "green" we are.

I dissent.

I find birdlife to be valuable, and once, in this space referenced a very insightful book, now in my files, called Why Birds Matter (Subtitle: Avian Ecological Function and Ecosystem Services; Edited by Çagan H. Sekercioglu, Daniel G. Wenny, and Christopher J. Whelan) because somehow we live in times that this has to be explained to us.

I love the evocative cover of the book, which evokes some of the reasons birds matter:



I referenced this book in a post a few years back: A Minor Problem For Sound Science of the Effect of Offshore Windfarms on Seabirds: There Isn't Any.

There's a lot of "Watt" talk in Mulvaney's solar energy book, using units of peak power that solar plants never actually reach, except for perhaps a few minutes on a cloudless sunny day near the summer solstice, the intellectually dishonest units use to hype the solar (and wind) industry, but I was pleased to find a unit of energy appearing in the text, which reports that solar PV USSE require about 36 square kilometers to produce 1 TWh of electricity, in SI units, 3600 X 10^12 Joules, where a Joule is a unit of energy (as is the derived unit, TWh).

The Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, the last nuclear plant in California, produced in 2021, on a footprint of 12 acres, (0.049 square kilometers) including the parking lot, 16.477 TWh.

Go figure.

I think Mulvaney's book is valuable inasmuch as it asks questions that aren't asked, but should be asked, as we rush headlong into a fantasy land that has no hope of addressing climate change.

I trust your preparations for the upcoming holiday are going well.

[hunter]

1. If anyone wants to model their proposed renewable energy schemes...

-- wind, solar, batteries, pumped hydro, electric cars, etc., -- then California has lots of real world data to draw from, all at gigawatt scales.

What's still a dream in many places, and even among people who post on DU, is reality here.

Playing with the data you'll discover that wind and solar are not economically viable without natural gas, and unnecessary with nuclear power.

It doesn't matter that a wealthy person can put up a huge solar array, buy lots of batteries and an electric car, and pretend to be "self sufficient." The actual cost of that electricity is too high for ordinary people and ordinary industry, and the reliability is low.

Schemes like net-metering harm less affluent people by raising the overall cost of living, even if we subsidize their electric rates,

It seems to me that California will eventually establish four or five "permanent" nuclear sites to assure an abundant supply of electricity, fresh water, and fuels for the next few hundred years. I don't see any magical fusion power plants or battery technologies on the horizon.

Thanks for this book review. I haven't decided if I'll buy Mulvaney's book yet. From what I've read he still seems optimistic about solar power.

I strongly oppose solar power projects on previously undeveloped lands and I'm mostly indifferent to neighborhood solar, my attitude being "if it makes them happy..." The technology interests me, which is similar to how I feel about cars, realizing there is no solar or automobile technology that will save the world and quite a few that will make it worse.

[NNadir]

2. I clearly oppose solar power as well, as it's only function is to...

...entrench, more or less permanently, the use of dangerous fossil fuels. (An exception might be things like road signs.)

I didn't buy the book, but accessed through a library.

This said, even if the rhetoric is not oppositional to this failed and rather dirty affectation, solar energy, and even solar energy is basically a scam to subsidize the rich at the expense of the poor, I give Mr. Mulvaney credit for asking himself the questions he seems to ask. I've only scanned the book and not seriously actually read it but if nothing else, noting the pernicious effect of so called "renewable energy" on wildlife, a surrogate for wilderness in general, he is doing some good.

The "solar will save us" belief system is now entering cult territory, no different than State religions, including but not limited to MAGAism, antivax shit and other beliefs that no amount of information can change. I personally believe, having once embraced that faith, and having become apostate, that softball questions can cause any moderately rational person to ask the bigger questions.

The biggest question that needs to be asked is whether or not solar has a snowballs chance in he'll (or perhaps a glacier's chance in 450 ppm of carbon dioxide) of addressing climate change. For me, if not for members of the cult, the answer is clear. It has failed, is failing, and will continue to fail.

Perhaps the path to really being able to understand what happened in the 2022 Northern Hemisphere summer will pass through gentler prodding of the type this book raises without the anger and vituperation to which I, for instance, am prone.

The book surely isn't perfect, neither is the review of it, but in the dire times, I welcome it.

[NNadir]

4. Badly, wastefully, and uselessly.