this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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What about all the sunny land that doesn't have Joshua trees? Why are we even trying to build power plants so far away from where the electricity is mostly needed?
Do you think there are no reasons? Would you accept this if there were, or would you just say the reasons were bad?
Build over existing infrastructure. One example is current project to cover water canals with solar. Don't need to acquire land, reduces evaporation saving water, reduces plant growth in canals lowering maintenance costs.
Cheap ground cannot be a reason then, OK?
Sure it can. Why not?
The issue with ground prices is they fail to account for stuff humans really need like clean air, clean water, biodiversity. So if you stripp all these factors in valuation and then start building while at the same time chopping down trees in need of protection. You are kinda rigging the game, or not?
That doesn't mean it's not a reason. It's just a reason you don't like.
The land is only cheap when you pretend those externalized environmental costs do not exist. They still have to be paid, usually by the public at large. I think the saying goes; socialize the cost and privatize the gains.
I knew I should not have taken the bait.
To me, good reasons would align with the goals of environmental protection and wealth transfer to the working class. How do Aratina-type projects do so better than a nuclear power plant (or concentrated solar or deep-well geothermal) within or nearby to a population center? If they ever do it's just incidental. The real reason for the Aratina development is that this was deal that satisfied the various capital interests involved in it (the land owner, “Avantus, a California company that is mostly owned by KKR, the global private equity firm”, and the bourgeois interests served by the county).