Franklin Matters: "solar projects accounted for a quarter of all development of natural lands"

Monday, July 13, 2020

"solar projects accounted for a quarter of all development of natural lands"

From the Boston Globe, articles of interest to Franklin:

"Massachusetts has been a national leader in solar power and now boasts more of the renewable energy than most other states. But it has come at a cost to forests and woodlands, and environmental advocates — not a group ordinarily prone to voicing doubts about renewable sources — say misguided state incentives have encouraged building solar farms on undeveloped land.

Now, with the coronavirus already causing major job losses and great uncertainty in the solar industry, state officials are planning to issue new rules that will sharply limit where solar farms can be built.

“We need to minimize the loss of these valuable natural assets to all forms of development,” said Heidi Ricci, an author of a Mass Audubon report this year that called for the protection of natural land. “We need this natural land to absorb the rain and clean our water, as storms become more intense from climate change.”