A sweeping plan to build 21 gigawatts of solar plus batteries on 136,000 acres could be a lifeline for Central Valley farmers facing devastating water shortages.
A sweeping plan to build 21 gigawatts of solar plus batteries on 136,000 acres could be a lifeline for Central Valley farmers facing devastating water shortages.
Hopefully they are converting only Ag land and not good habitat. I’ve been in that area quite a bit and there are still a few scraps of healthy ecosystem here and there between the farms and fallow fields. It’s not clear to me from the map if those are all being preserved.
Closer to Sac there is an old-growth oak woodland that is planned to be levelled to put in a solar farm. The same thing happens in the Mohave as well: healthy ecosystems bulldozed for solar.
Solar farms have many benefits, but habitat protection is also incredibly important.
Would be nice if all those CV peach farms that got left holding the bag when Del Monte filed for bankruptcy could do this.