The clearing and use of large areas of land for solar power facilities can adversely affect native vegetation and wildlife in many ways, including loss of habitat; interference with rainfall and drainage; or direct contact causing injury or death.
One of the biggest problems that solar energy technology poses is that energy is only generated while the sun is shining. That means nighttime and overcast days can interrupt the supply.
The production of solar panels requires the extraction of materials like silicon, silver, and aluminium. The mining and processing of these materials pose significant environmental consequences, including habitat destruction, soil erosion, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions
Solar energy technologies and power plants do not produce air pollution or greenhouse gases when operating. Using solar energy can have a positive, indirect effect on the environment when solar energy replaces or reduces the use of other energy sources that have larger effects on the environment. However, producing and using solar energy technologies may have some environmental effects.
Temperature Sensitivity: Temperature-related issues are a serious problem for solar generators, especially when the batteries undergo fast degradation due to extreme heat.
Solar panels reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere, so a solar farm can block out some of the sunlight that would otherwise reach the ground. This can lead to a decrease in the temperature of the ground and the air near the ground. Solar farms can also impact the local wind patterns.
Solar panels have a carbon footprint, primarily during manufacturing, but their lifecycle emissions are significantly lower than those of fossil fuels, with estimates ranging from 40 to 100 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated.
Although solar systems are among the leading renewable energy sources, there are opportunities to reduce their carbon footprint further by employing following procedures -
If we only take into account their usage, solar panels are 100% sustainable, however, if manufacturing, materials, land use and transport is accounted for, some carbon is emitted during the process. This works out at around 14- 73g of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per kilo-watt hour (kWh).
Solar energy technologies require materials, such as metals and glass, that are energy intensive to make. The environmental issues related to producing these materials could be associated with solar energy systems. A number of organizations and researchers have conducted PV energy payback analysis and concluded that a PV system can produce energy equivalent to the energy used for its manufacture within 1 to 4 years. Most PV systems have operating lives of up to 30 years or more.
The hazardous chemicals used for manufacturing photovoltaic (PV) cells and panels must be carefully handled to avoid releasing them into the environment. Some types of PV cell technologies use heavy metals, and these types of cells and PV panels may require special handling when they reach the end of their useful life. Some solar thermal systems use potentially hazardous fluids to transfer heat, and leaks of these materials could be harmful to the environment.
As with any type of power plant, large solar power plants can affect the environment at or near their locations. Clearing land for a power plant may have long-term effects on the habitats of native plants and animals. However, installing solar energy systems on land that has marginal agricultural value or integrating solar energy systems on farms may provide a variety of economic and environmental benefits to farmers.
Some solar power plants may require water for cleaning solar collectors and concentrators or for cooling turbine generators. Using large volumes of ground water or surface water for cleaning collectors in some arid locations may affect the ecosystems that depend on these water resources. In addition, the beam of concentrated sunlight a solar power tower creates can kill birds and insects that fly into the beam.
Farmers can benefit from solar energy in several ways—by leasing farmland for solar; installing a solar system on a house, barn, or other building; or through agrivoltaics.
Agrivoltaics is defined as agriculture, such as crop production, livestock grazing, and pollinator habitat, located underneath solar panels and/or between rows of solar panels. Solar energy offers farmers the opportunity to harvest the sun twice—the same reason land is good for farming (flat, open areas), also makes it good for solar installations.
Agrivoltaics has the potential to help farmers adapt to climate change and diversify their income through land lease payments or other business structures. Research in the drylands of Arizona found that farming under solar panels can decrease evaporation of water from the soil and potentially reduce irrigation requirements. Agrivoltaics can also improve crop yield and crop resistance in extreme weather, such as droughts. Adding farming to existing solar energy sites is being explored as an approach to increase access to land for historically disadvantaged groups, such as Black and immigrant farmers. At the same time, questions remain for farmers about how to do agrivoltaics, including which crops are suitable in a shaded environment.
For the solar industry, agrivoltaics has the potential to facilitate siting of solar installations, improve solar PV panel performance by cooling the panels, and lower operations and maintenance costs by limiting the need for mowing. Yet the capital costs of agrivoltaics tend to be higher than traditional solar development due to modified system structures and more complex design and installation. To make agrivoltaics a widely available option for developers, questions about cost, worker safety, liability, and other business, legal, and regulatory issues will need to be addressed.
For communities, agrivoltaics could help keep farmland in production – and help sustain rural farmland economies. More research is needed, however, to understand whether – and under what conditions – communities are likely to support solar development if it combines both energy and agriculture.
Another related aspect related to Agrivoltaics is having a concept of Solar Panel + pollinator combination. Pollinators—such as bees, butterflies, and other insects—are critical to the success of about 35 percent of global food crop production.
In order to thrive, pollinators must have a suitable habitat. Establishing pollinator-friendly plants under and around ground-mounted solar arrays has the potential to provide this critical habitat and benefit both the pollinators and nearby agriculture. But a number of important questions remain about the impacts of pollinator- friendly solar and how to implement it at a large scale.
The use of Artificial intelligence tools to analyse and develop pollinator story, is interesting topic to study. Till date not much research has gone to this end, but AI definitely can help to create a sustainable model to overcome the issue of greenhouse effect & global warming.
The intent of creating this document is to have holistic understanding of emerging technologies to understand how we can contribute to better living conditions and mitigate the environmental challenges created by the advancement of technology itself in last 100 years.