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Brandon Baker
The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) believes the nation could save $61 billion in energy costs by 2050, creating 50,250 jobs along the way.
The U.S. could achieve those goals by vastly expanding the solar heating and cooling capacity (SHC) across the country, according to a SEIA report, Solar Heating & Cooling: Energy for a Secure Future, released this month. Installing 100 million new SHC panels nationwide would increase SHC capacity from nine gigawatts (GW) to 300 GW in the next 37 years, according to the report prepared by Boston-based BEAM Engineering.
The country's nine GW of SHC capacity ranks it just 36th in the world, relative to its population.
"With ambitious targets and a smart, easy-to-understand strategy now in place, SHC can help to displace an estimated 226 million tons of carbon emissions annually," task force chair Ole Pilgaard said. "That's the equivalent of taking 47 million passenger cars off the road."
Heating and cooling represents about 44 percent of U.S. energy consumption. Expanding SHC systems could allow the nation to generate about 8 percent of its heating and cooling needs through "clean, affordable solar energy," the report states.
The residents of 115 million U.S. homes consume about $266 billion of energy each year, with 72 percent of it related to water heating, space heating and space cooling. That's enough to put 10 million people through college, the report estimates.
SHC expansion would positively impact the country by:
- Avoiding 226 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, which equates to taking 64 coal plants offline.
- Adding $2.1 billion in increased federal tax revenue through added jobs
- Lessening the damage caused by drilling, extracting, transporting and storing fossil fuels.
“Part of our challenge is to do a better job of educating policymakers—at both the state and federal level—about the enormous benefits SHC provides to American consumers and businesses, as well as to the U.S. economy,” SEIA President and CEO Rhone Resch said. “If we’re successful, the payoff will be enormous in terms of future job creation and energy savings.”
Residential SHC systems can cost $6,000 to $10,000, while commercial and industrial systems can run from $20,000 to $100,000. The report estimates that the payback period can be as little as four years, depending on application, location and financial incentives.
A roadmap and statement from Resch calls for long-term policies and financial incentives to make the expansion work.
"The three main types of financial incentives are tax credits, rebate/grant programs and Renewable Energy Credits (REC)," according to the roadmap. "Successful financial incentives allow businesses to make investments under predictable, long-term economic conditions."
SEIA is optimistic about policymakers getting on the same page, stating that Democrats, Republicans and Independents support solar energy by counts of 94, 75 and 89 percent, respectively.
“Without question, this plan will benefit both our economy and our environment,” Pilgaard said.
Farms with just one or a handful of different crops encourage fewer species of pollinating and pest-controlling insects to linger, ultimately winnowing away crop yields, according to a new study.
Up to half of the detrimental impacts of the "landscape simplification" that monocropping entails come as a result of a diminished mix of ecosystem service-providing insects, a team of scientists reported Oct. 16 in the journal Science Advances.
Monocrop palm oil plantation Honduras.
SHARE Foundation / Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0
"Our study shows that biodiversity is essential to ensure the provision of ecosystem services and to maintain a high and stable agricultural production," Matteo Dainese, the study's lead author and a biologist at Eurac Research in Bolzano, Italy, said in a statement.
It stands to reason that, with declines in the sheer numbers of insects that ferry pollen from plant to plant and keep crop-eating pests under control, these services will wane as well. But until now, it hasn't been clear how monocultures affect the number and mix of these species or how crop yields might change as a result.
Aiming to solve these questions, Dainese and his colleagues pulled together data from 89 studies cutting across a variety of landscapes, from the tropics of Asia and Africa to the higher latitudes of northern Europe. They tabulated the number of pollinating and pest-controlling insects at these sites — both the absolute number of individuals and the number of species — along with an assessment of the ecosystem services the insects provided.
In almost all of the studies they looked at, the team found that a more diverse pool of these species translated into more pollination and greater pest control. They also showed that simplified landscapes supported fewer species of service-providing insects, which ultimately led to lower crop yields.
The researchers also looked at a third measure of the makeup of insect populations — what they called "evenness." In natural ecosystems, a handful of dominant species with many more individuals typically live alongside a higher number of rarer species. The team found as landscapes became less diverse, dominant species numbers dwindled and rare species gained ground. This resulting, more equitable mix led to less pollination (though it didn't end up affecting pest control).
"Our study provides strong empirical support for the potential benefits of new pathways to sustainable agriculture that aim to reconcile the protection of biodiversity and the production of food for increasing human populations," Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter, one of the study's authors and an animal ecologist at the University of Würzburg in Germany, said in the statement.
The scientists figure that the richness of pollinator species explains around a third of the harmful impacts of less diverse landscapes, while the richness of pest-controlling species accounts for about half of the same measure. In their view, the results of their research point to the need to protect biodiversity on and around crops in an uncertain future.
"Under future conditions with ongoing global change and more frequent extreme climate events, the value of farmland biodiversity ensuring resilience against environmental disturbances will become even more important," Steffan-Dewenter said.
Reposted with permission from our media associate Mongabay.