Michigan is poised to cut down hundreds of acres of forest to make space for a solar panel development, MLive reported Thursday. [emphasis, links added]
The state will soon start competitive bidding on approximately 420 acres of forested land near Gaylord, Michigan, to clear space for a solar farm while generating revenue and advancing the state’s long-term green energy targets, according to MLive.
There is some evidence suggesting that such a move would increase emissions, and Michigan is one of the least sunny states in the country, according to an analysis conducted by The Washington Post.
“Not incredibly popular with everyone,” Scott Whitcomb, the director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) public lands office, told MLive. “I will be frank about that.”
“We don’t give this land away for free,” Whitcomb told the outlet. “That lease revenue can go into natural resources management. So, I wouldn’t say it’s the only reason, but it is something we think about. The bottom line is, we have to pay for the activities of this agency somehow.”
Notably, one study published by Harvard researchers found that clearing forests to replace solar panel developments may actually lead to an overall increase in greenhouse gas emissions, and a paper published by Chinese researchers also reached similar conclusions.
There are also oil and gas wellheads in other areas of the woods that remain forested, according to MLive.
“This is pretty amazing. Michigan is not like California, it’s not like the sun is always shining there,” Dan Kish, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“This is the theater of the absurd, and it’s all driven by tax credits and giveaways from the federal and state government, and by mandates that the governor there has implemented.”
Michigan’s Healthy Climate Plan states that officials should “avoid land-use conversion that causes a net increase in [greenhouse gas] emissions and prioritize land uses that reduce [greenhouse gas] emissions” concerning the state’s waters and forests, but Whitcomb told MLive that he hopes to use some solar revenues to purchase land for uses like connecting habitat for wildlife or carbon sequestration.
Whitcomb added that the 420 acres is already cut in half by a major transmission line that will make it easier to get the solar farm operational and make it less likely that new power lines will need to be built.
Read rest at Daily Caller
Even if one believes that reducing CO2 emissions the use of solar in Michigan (and across the northern tier of US states, especially east of the Great Plains, is utterly foolish. Winter months have are short on sunlight due to the tilt of the earth to start with. But the states starting with Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri and working your way to the east also have too few clear sunny days to actually generate much electricity. So if this vast solar array produces even 10% of what it is capable of I’d be shocked. But this is strictly to show how “green” they are.
So where is the Sierra Club or Greenpeace to oppose t his where is Butterfly Hill and her fellow Tree Huggers Tree Sitters to oppose this just think that when Birds returning from their Southern Vacations and find their forests are gone and replaced with Solar Panels
People are always looking for somebody to blame instead of themselves.
These trees have already been felled. You should qorry more that trump intends to drill in
national
Parks.