No Energy + No Food = Terrible Policy!!


This hailstorm occurred just west of Houston on March 15. It shows what happens when you combine the (far too numerous) solar farms with Great Plains hailstorms on (desperately needed) productive farmland. 

Let's break this down:
  • Obviously, solar developer wants to put their panels in areas where the sun shines often. The cloudy Great Lakes region, for example, is a bad place to put them. So, the Great Plains with its abundant sunshine -- at first thought -- seems like a great place. 
  • The Great Plains (a/k/a "Tornado Alley) has big hailstorms. It is almost impossible to protect solar farms from large or giant hail. 
  • Did you know that -- for the first time in the history of the Republic -- the United States has become a net importer of food since 2020?
  • So, valuable farmland is taken out of service for solar panels that -- as the Harvard Business Review and other publications have recently pointed out -- wear out much more quickly than planned. 
  • So, where are all of these -- non-recyclable -- damaged and worn out solar panels going to go? I've read recently that it will be difficult or nearly impossible to return these lands to agricultural production, 
The FEMA map below explicitly includes agricultural loss in its ratings. 
So, rather than "farm farms" having their crops destroyed, solar "farms" are destroyed in these sunny regions. 

Wind and solar are terrible ways to get energy that are both expensive and destabilize the grid. The United States needs an all-out program to build nuclear and, in the spots where it has been approved, hydro. 

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