Where Civil War battles were once fought there is a new battle being fought ‘…on the farms surrounding Culpeper, Va., about an hour outside Washington, D.C., and in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Now, a new conflict is underway, as members of the local community push back against energy providers attempting to cover Culpeper—and other parts of rural Virginia—with solar facilities, sometimes thousands of acres in size.
The push for solar in Virginia is part of a nationwide effort to ramp up several fashionable renewable energy sources in the United States. To attract energy providers, federal, state, and local governments offer generous tax credits and subsidies for solar and wind facilities.
Virginia’s General Assembly voted in 2016 to subsidize solar and wind energy with an 80 percent sales and use tax exemption for machinery, tools, and equipment for public service corporations, following a number of legislative pushes for clean energy in the state. It was a successful strategy: Since the decision, solar providers have gained approval to set up shop in Spotsylvania, Chesterfield, Accomack, and other communities. The proposed solar facility in Culpeper, operated by the California-based Cricket Solar, will cover 800 acres of land intended for agricultural use and is set to produce 80 megawatts of power for the county.
But a growing body of research shows that, in the long run, solar isn’t efficient enough to justify the land used and the money spent to make it a primary energy source. Doug Orye, an industrial electrical engineer who operates a farm near Culpeper, said he fears that solar companies moving into Virginia are using up land that would be better served for agricultural use.
“We’re destroying huge amounts of land for a system that, at best, is 20 percent efficient,” he told the Washington Free Beacon, explaining that for their cost, solar facilities produce an almost negligible amount of energy.
Orye added that in his experience, solar works best in small-scale situations, such as panels installed on private rooftops and sheds. For larger scale projects, though, the area solar panels cover coupled with their fickle nature—such as the impossibility of use on rainy days or at night—makes them not worth a hefty investment from government entities.’ https://freebeacon.com/issues/virginias-push-for-solar-panels-offers-few-rays-of-hope/
The Left-leaning Greenies have several agendas of which one is to bankrupt Western nations through wasting billions on so-called renewables. Here in Australia, we are fighting the same battles these fruit loop Green environmentalists are pushing there in the US of A.
Sadly, here in Australia, both major parties have swallowed the kool-aid. We don’t have a Donald Trump that hasn’t partaken of the kool-aid thinking that these ignorant renewable greenies believe are the answer to whatever catastrophe they are prophesying. This renewable obsession is a religion to these people. They, or at least they seem to believe they can save the earth from whatever they falsely believe we humans are doing to it. Their biggest enemy here in Australia is coal. Even though the exporting of coal brings billions of dollars into the Australian economy and provides thousands of jobs these eco-rodents are bound and determined to cease coal being mined and exported.
If the renewable fruit loop Australian Labor Party wins May 18, 2019, Australian Federal Election burning the furniture to keep warm this winter may be the average man’s only option.
whatyareckon 