[jeppester]

I live in a small Danish town that would have very likely been surrounded by solar panels by now if we had not put up a fight.

The problem is that these projects are pitched to land owners, to be placed in areas they can't see from their own windows. Those who live nearby are not involved until the approval is a formality (or presented as such). Often times the investors will also pay certain house owners for their silence, making the locals suspicious of each other.

They do this because obviously no one likes someone from the outside to take away the green* surroundings that are a big part of why people live there - and in the process lowering the value of everyone's houses.

I can't comprehend why someone would think that this was a good way of rolling out solar.

I agree that we are going to need solar as part of the mix. It would just be much better to start with the locations where people do NOT want to live, for instance next to motorways.

Luckily I think we are slowly moving in that direction due to all the resistance.

*I'm well aware that fields are heavy industry, but they are plants and rarely 2,5 meters tall.

[AlBugdy]

So you put up a fight because people put something on their own land that doesn't look pretty without a HOA agreement in place? Or am I missing something?

If I were living there and wanted to do an upgrade like solar panels but then some neighbor complained that my house is an "eye sore" and was supposedly decreasing their property value, I'd be really frustrated.

[kioshix]

They're not talking about a home owner's solar panels here, but giant solar farms surrounding them.

[shibapuppie]

What's the over-under on tire and brake dust settling on panels next to (presumably) high-speed motorways?

[jeppester]

Thank you for bringing this up. It's not something I've thought of as a problem before.

It does in fact - based on my 5 minutes of research - seem that it can be an important factor, especially if the panels are placed within "splash range" of the road.

When I mention solar panels near motorways I'm not picturing them right next to the road, I'm thinking of larger strips, perhaps 30-100 meters from the road and in areas that have already become unattractive due to noise pollution. There are many such areas.

I think the main issue with using them is that there are many land owners involved. It's easier to get fewer land owners to commit larger fields, than many land owners to commit small strips. But that is IMO a solvable problem, not a good reason for placing the panels next to where people like to live.

[flohofwoe]

> When I mention solar panels near motorways I'm not picturing them right next to the road, I'm thinking of larger strips, perhaps 30-100 meters from the road and in areas that have already become unattractive due to noise pollution. There are many such areas.

FWIW, most of the bigger solarfarms in East Germany seem to be on former Cold War airbases, or in former lignite mining areas. IMHO a pretty good 'land recycling strategy':

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.1658488,12.4325343,5059m/dat...

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.8290328,13.6890243,2783m/dat...

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3296415,12.6590003,1983m/dat...

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.633346,13.7674599,1989m/data...

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.9209948,13.2235344,3356m/dat...

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5524298,13.9695021,4648m/dat...

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.612948,14.2381122,2691m/data...

[cucumber3732842]

I'm betting the effect is a rounding error compared to road salt build up.

[ChoGGi]

Not everywhere uses salt, lots of grit used around here.

[garte]

You know that all that "nature" you desire is synthetic? Living in rural areas without actually working there is as far from a natural state as it can be: the whole lifestyle is based on subsidies by cities and technology: your concrete, your car, your heating, your power, groceries... it's all getting brought to you by fossil fuels and plastics.

So maybe accepting some part of that technology to stand on your "natural" grass in your front yard might be necessary to at least offset _some_ of the costs you're imposing on the environment living your lifestyle.

[jeppester]

It seems as though you are antagonizing a certain imaginary group of people that I do not belong to, just because I chose to live in the country side.

There was a reason I used the phrasing "green surroundings", I'm well aware that it's not "nature" in the sense of being untouched by humans. There are hardly any such places in Denmark.

Nevertheless people live here because they like these surroundings, it doesn't make any sense that they should "pay" for living here by having those surroundings taken away.

Whether or not it's feasible to have people living in the country side is a whole other discussion, which I do not think can be boiled down to city = good, countryside = bad.

Another related discussion is what is the natural habitat for a human being, at this point in time a slight majority of humans might live in larger cities, but that is historically a new development. I don't have the answer here, but my guess would be that a small town in the country side is more similar to the environments humans have historically lived and evolved in.

[garte]

Thanks for your thorough response, I appreciate it.

My point was less that "everything comes from the city" but that living in the countryside has massive externalities that get deposited elsewhere as I mentioned.

So it would be kind of fair to at least start accepting some externalities - like energy - to be actually part of your living reality.

In essence: you need energy, get it yourself and don't NIMBY your way out of the consequences of "living in the countryside".

[jeppester]

The fields that the solar farms are replacing were generating food for everyone, including those who live in the cities.

1-2 days per year the whole town has a smell of manure.

That's is an externality we accepted when we moved here, so we do not complain that the fields need to produce food.

Also, you are implying that we have not accepted any solar panels, which is wrong. We have plenty in the near area. We just don't want all the fields surrounding the town to be plastered with panels.

[garte]

As I said below:

Cozy small time agriculture in the west is a small part of your general food supply. The rest is in places you do not want to live and is called monoculture. A huge part of your food supply is not produced "in the countryside" in either Denmark or most of the West.

It all starts with oil and energy. Nothing else matters as much. So getting off oil and producing energy in other ways is at the forefront of our struggle as a species and if you deny this progress because it hinders the view from your detached house porch I get the impression you have not really realized the situation we are in.

[jeppester]

I totally agree, except for the last part where you attack a straw man.

I'm not talking about the view from my front porch, I'm talking about solar panels in nearly every direction, like a sort of barrier, choking the town.

As mentioned we do have solar panels in some directions, we just don't want them everywhere.

Also there's no dichotomy here, it's not a choice between choking small towns and saving the planet vs. the opposite.

I'm arguing that we should first and foremost place solar panels where people already do not want to live for various reasons. The incentives we've created so far have not been good at that.

Update: I realise that I misread the first part of your comment. The agriculture that the panels are replacing is probably what you would call monoculture. It would however seem that the monoculture you picture looks very different from what we have in Denmark. If you think about endless "field deserts" that's not what it is. That is also why people like to live here.

[cucumber3732842]

> it's all getting brought to you by fossil fuels and plastics.

Which come from where? Last I checked there weren't many pump jacks in Copenhagen.

Pretty much all material wealth of modern society comes from raw materials sourced in rural areas. Those then get processed locally (e.g you don't waste money shipping logs, you mill them and ship boards) and post processed in increasingly urban areas. It's the paper pushing (engineering, finance, etc) of the supply chain and distribution that tends to be centered around urban areas.

I hate these sort of macro-economically ignorant takes and their peddlers. Acting like either part of the economy could exist in anything like it's current capacity without the other is an exercise in lying with numbers to obfuscate the lies.

[garte]

Cozy small time agriculture in the west is a small part of your general food supply. The rest is in places you do not want to live and is called monoculture.

All "raw materials" you mentioned are not produced "in the countryside" in either Denmark or most of the West.

It all starts with oil and energy. Nothing else matters as much. So getting off oil and producing energy in other ways is at the forefront of our struggle as a species and if you deny this progress because it hinders the view from your detached house porch I get the impression you have not really realized the situation we are in.

[cucumber3732842]

I was speaking globally, it's not like Denmark is producing tons of crops. I agree small time boutique agriculture and a lot of the regulatory policy (i.e. crapping on any sort of value producing industrial activity while exempting other things of which farming is one) that enables it is a short sighted scourge that stunts economic development, a sort of "the island tourism economy" we have at home if you will.

That said, I'm happy to watch the people who want to peddle that garbage fling poo at the people who want to peddle bigco solar/wind farm projects because they're bad too. Most of them are miracles of financial/regulatory engineering that only really move panels and electrons around as a pretext for the former and the end result is they drive up the marginal price of all sorts of things and far too often only deliver value to the investors. This is shortsighted and will ultimately hamper adoption of these technologies and is already damaging our institutions.