How to fight climate change with parking lots
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2023
- Why haven’t we covered them in solar panels?
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In 2021, President Biden set an ambitious climate goal for the US to reach net-zero carbon emissions economy-wide by 2050. And as part of the transition to renewable energy, the country has drastically ramped up production of solar over the past few years. But that’s led to a new problem: finding enough land on which to put solar panels.
The easiest and cheapest places to install solar panels are often large, undeveloped plots of land. It's why, in many places across the country, we've seen rural areas - including fragile desert ecosystems and valuable farmland - turned into solar farms. Many local residents and conservationists have protested these rural solar projects for a variety of reasons: Some want to keep natural views, others want to retain space for agriculture or aim to preserve biodiversity. Solar will likely play an important role in the country’s move away from fossil fuels - but is there a smarter way to do it that doesn’t require taking up so much rural land?
In the video above, we explore one option that could help: parking lots. Solar photovoltaics researcher and professor Joshua Pearce goes into the data on how placing solar canopies over parking lots could be a worthwhile investment for many cities. And as more countries, like France, are moving toward retrofitting parking spaces with solar, we look at what it could mean in the US.
SOURCES:
Studies:
digitalcommons.mtu.edu/cgi/vi...
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
www.nature.com/articles/s4158...
www.eia.gov/electricity/data/...
Further reading:
e360.yale.edu/features/puttin...
www.washingtonpost.com/climat...
www.vox.com/2021/8/18/2255619...
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How to defeat climate change with parking lots: stop building them
my immediate thought as well!
Yea it's so sad how most Americans don't understand that just having other options then cars helps soo much. Fewer lanes, parking lots and space between stores is needed and you could even go to a store by foot!
@@demp11man everyone hates cars until they need ambulance
Liberalism and Conservatism are brain diseases
@@alexanderguerrero347Who doesn't want ambulances to not have to wade through traffic?
The problem with doing this - putting solar panels over car parks - in the US is that it reinforces that lands use as a car park rather than something more productive like mixed developments.
That’s true, but it seems like the research is focusing on using this solution for established businesses. But yea, you’re right, if the business goes down then it’s just a lot with solar panels which people won’t wanna take down.
@@Slimypenicillinwhy not just put them on buildings instead?
At this point. A win is a win.
Something more productive like literally letting it lay fallow.
@@futureqweenofmoderation6024 no it isn't, we have a housing crisis right now and California and NY are case 0. You need to integrate these issues together ideally from the get-go when making new projects lest you want to worry about expensive redesigns/renovations or outright demolitions in the medium to long term
As someone who lived in AZ for 18 years, I would have surely driven as much as 10 minutes out of the way for a parking lot that has shade for my car over the same store exposed to the sun.
Vox is overshadowed by many 'Small Content Creators' like Not-Just-Bikes, Adam Somethin
I'm from Florida and was also wondering why Disney did not cover their massive parking lots with solar canopies. Not only would they generate electricity to run the numerous air conditioners Disney needs to keep guests cool, but would also help prevent their customers cars from turning into ovens in the Florida heat.
Disney is a FOR PROFIT company, with little care for anything else.
Check out Legoland! They already do this and I was amazed and wondering why disney never jumped on this model.
They're doing it at Disneyland Paris, it's the largest solar power plant of the Paris region
I have a truly ingenius idea. Don't go to Disneyland! 😃
Same thing I have been wondering for years. It's because those who make the decisions at Disney don't have to suffer the consequences, and are so disconnected from the real world that they don't care about anyone else, especially their employees who suffer the most from having to commute and park their cars in the scorching sun for hours on end, while being paid the minimum wage. The tourists are being mostly shuttled from the Disney hotels, of course for additional fees.
Even better than covering parking lots:
Replace parking lots by actual buildings. And cover the buildings' roofs with solar.
well the problem is they need the parking lots for the buildings.
cars take up more space than people duh
@@camejuanm buildings do not mean you need cars for them if you have a good transport system (like in the Netherlands or Germany)
I assume you mean parking structure otherwise this doesn't make any sense, but parking structure require way more maintenance so not necessarily better unless it's near a population center.
@@camejuanmthe problem is the assumption that the only way to get to a place is by car. The even bigger problem is that local governments have taken this assumption and turned it into a mandate, by requiring an arbitrary amount of parking at any building. Say you want to build a home without a garage because you don’t drive a car. In most places, it’s impossible to do so.
@@camejuanm when the land use policy is centered around car travel, then cars are necessary. However, if land use policies accomodate alternatives, then less cars will be needed. There will still be cars and parking but much much less currently (relative to people). See North American zoning, minimum parking requirements, minimum lot sizes, set backs, height restrictions, federal highway subsidies, etc, etc, etc.
We're doing this all over in France!
Not to mention it means the heat caught in the tarmac is now less, the green house effect in your car is less (which is great! Believe me!) and the space is now more productive and give your shoppers/clients more reason to use your parking lot (the shade, the recharge for electric cars, ecological reasons even)
thank you for this, the other comments do not seem to understand that this is a good idea regardless of how car-centric your country is (and also that places outside of north america are more car-dependent than they think, especially outside of urban centers)
Is there a good UA-cam video made about the French parking lots?
In France though, you also benefit from having a massive installed nuclear generation capacity that covers 80% of the grids base load. So putting panels on land that can be used for other uses is not really necessary. Also, the land value for agricultural products is higher for France, due to high value PDO products that have a global market. It's likely that the economics for France make the land more valuable for agriculture than solar panels.
Additionally cars will be less hot so less need for AC which uses more power from the car.
The longer term goal though is to replace parking with buildings that are sustainable and transit oriented.
But European countries are smarter than America. Those with power in America only care about one thing: the almighty dollar.
"Presented by Delta" No wonder they didn't even consider that cars/parking lots in cities may be the actual problem that needs solved.
So true
Greenwashing
I situated outside of US, do you care to elaborate more on the problem that needs to be solved to cars/parking lots in cities?
@@ruiyang4668Basically we need to reduce cars because they're highly inefficient, expensive, and environmentally damaging.
Instead we should build denser mixed use cities and towns, with the principle of prioritizing pedestrians and cyclists. Just like the old days.
Huh? Delta sells air travel, not cars.
I am glad rooftops were mentioned as well. One thing we have no shortage of in this country besides parking lot space is rooftop space on large buildings like walmarts, grocery stores, costco, and all kinds of warehouses and distribution centers. I would be interested in seeing all those eyesores covered with solar to at least offset their energy consumption if not generate an excess.
The cost of electricity for a perishable warehouse can be over $100,000 per month... keeping it cool costs $$
I believe Walmart and Costco are installing rooftop solar panels on a very large basis in recent years.
Exactly. I can't understand why companies haven't been doing this for decades, at least in sunny countries. They could at very least re-charge all their fork-lift trucks for free and maybe even run refrigeration.
They have solar panels over houses here in the uk , they make a tiny amount of energy and last 8 years then can't be recycled, if you think it's a eye sore now wait until you see house with panels on , it looks like a monstrosity and makes tiny bit of power to power 1 shower for a day 😂
I feel like this would really hamper getting rid of parking lots and replacing them, they're already a plague on space, making them quasi mandatory for energy seems like it would make it impossible to move away from cars and hurt the climate movement overall
yeah, like this video has good intentions but the fact that they even think should be done in LA which is the posterchild of everything wrong with American Urban Planning AND our housing crisis would lead to more harm then good if this policy seriously left the drawing boards. This is a big Vox fail tbh
@@mohammedsarker5756 Without appropriate zoning and public transportation, LA would become a 10x nightmare if we just got rid of all parking lots. Even if the city implemented the entire wishlist of urban planners and public transportation advocates today, it would take a really long time (10+ years) for significant change to take effect. It's not an overnight fix, as much as I wish that was the case.
Is parking lot solar perfect? Not even close but if it can help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels (have you bought gas recently?) then it's worth exploring.
If it's a part solution today or a perfect solution in 10-20-30 years, then I'd rather choose the part solution today. It's becoming clear that we as a society don't care enough to make the real, expensive changes necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change, so unfortunately we have to settle on "good-enough" policies like this one.
You can make rules that require parking lots to be covered with solar, while also making rules that reduce the amount of parking space. Those are not mutually exclusive.
I live in the boonies 30 minutes away from a store by car. I'm not biking to get $170 worth of groceries. It barely fits in my trunk as it. So what about people who don't live in cities and more importantly like driving?
Idk if vox just didnt look into it, but one of the best ways to instal more solar panels in urban and suburban areas, is to just put them on residential and commercial buildings. In Germany for example you, as a house owner, can put solar panels onto your roof and either use it for yourself or put it on the public grid with gettin paid for every kw/h from the electricity company that owns the grid.
As far as I know and have observed, the same is the case in India as well. I think businesses must also be informed to use at least 30% of their power consumption from their own roof top solar or other renewable source of energy.
Is this not an everywhere thing? What you mentioned is exactly the same here in Australia... I didn't think it was special, its not new or anything :-p Is the US just that far behind?
@@EmmaAus I'm not sure whether US has it or not, but many a times USA has surprised me with what we consider normal in many other places.
In the US we can do this. Solar is just very expensive here but I know plenty of my neighbors who already use solar and I'm seeing it more and more everywhere I go. Once it becomes more affordable for more Americans it'll get more adopted. Both commercially and residentially.
Power companies don't like that idea, they 'earn' less revenue that way, revenue they need to pay for maintenance for their equipment and employees, we would need to nationalize the grid and that's just not going to happen in this country.
I'm from Phoenix, AZ and we have quite a few of these canopy solar farms over parking lots. They make the triple digit summers a lot easier on our cars.
We have them all over southern CA also, and have had for many years. The makers of this video must be blind or living in a cave to think this is a novel idea. I guess there could be more built, but ....in fact there are more built every year, so again I don't see the point of "we should do what we're already doing."
I remember when I was vacationing in Italy in the mid 2000s and noticed al of the solar panes on parking lot shading roofs and wondered what that was all about. I got to find out it was a program of the italian government, that had at the time just realised how much space parking lots take up and how sunny space is in Italy.
Anyways, it really shows, that the USA has apparently started thinking about climate change seemingly last week. Thing other countries started doing in the 2000s or even the 90s, the USA is only doing now. So much on being a world leader on climate change.
Also, so much on the other narrative, that exists, which says, that the rest of the world should do something first. I present to the USA: the rest of the world, doing something... for the last several decades. So, maybe start doing SOMETHING
Biden understands climate change and is doing everything he can to fight the problem. Biden rejoined the Paris climate accord, and is establishing policies to help us switch to clean renewable energy sources - something the last president worked to destroy. Anyway I think we are presently on the right track and could have been 4 years ahead of the game if in the past we had a better president.
You can basically thank Reagan for that. If Carter’s plans had continued at pace, the US would’ve been on par (or perhaps slightly ahead) of Europe in solar and wind build-out.
You're forgetting the huge oil companies that America has and all the hundreds of billions they've spent throughout the years trying to keep America in the dark while allowing China to race ahead with the new energy world. If it wasn't for them, America would be the world's largest solar panels maker, as the technology was invented in America.
It's the blame of more than just one president. Decarbonization was always going to be politically difficult in a country with such large fossil fuel and auto industries.
@@jimmyhirr5773 In Italy, car companies like Fiat or oil and gas companies like Eni are also the backbone of the italian economy. But maybe these transitions because of climate change don't come as much as a shock to you, when you start working on this early on. The best example I can think of is Ørsted, which used to be Denmark's biggest oil and gas and cal giant. Nowadays, because they started transitioning in like the 70s and 80s, it is Denmark's biggest producer of wind power, district heating operator and overall biggestrenewable energy company. Their expertise in offshore oil plattforms came in handy, when they were crucial at developing offshore wind power.
How about we stop using cars in general and build walkable cities with good public transport?
15 minute city is the answer. Republicans call it communism so it will not happen unfortunately
Just putting my comment here on this momentous point in history. I was here when James Royce Dawson solved all our climate problems. 🫡
Yeah it’s so easy to do. Let’s just rebuild all our cities and change our entire way of life. I’m sure there’s no environmental impact at all with rebuilding cities right?
@@tanman99 the dutch did it and it works
@@tanman99 it's called rezoning and development my guy. You can build stuff over, many other countries (and other American cities do it)
"...taking up agricultural land" yes... in the middle of the desert. One of the reasons why that region of the US is under water scarcity because they waste it farming on a desert.
Good Lord. So France makes it a requirement to install solar while the US talks about if it’s “profitable” & allowing the megacorp like Walmart sell it back to the community rather that just making them do it. The whole country would be better off eliminating parking lots & working on public transport.
Some schools in California have built solar in parking lots, and it's really nice. When it's 100+ degrees outside, your car gets shade so it's not 200+ degrees in your car when you get in. This also saves energy that the AC has to use to cool it down.
California needs to get on board with solar parking lots everywhere ASAP and not use bureaucracy as an excuse while the world is burning
“This video is presented by Delta Airlines”
Parking lots ARE the problem. We don’t need to invest even more into poor land-use practices just because it’s profitable for the investor. Parking lots (particularly urban ones) should instead be turned into HOUSING
then we can add solar panels on top :)
I agree that this would be the ideal thing to do. But, in pursuit of the ideal solution, we mustn't ignore a solution, that is "only" better than the current state, but non-ideal.
So where is anyone going to park? Nearest store is 3 miles out, if they have no parking then what? Not to mention if it was turned into housing, that's more people equaling more cars and then more parking lots for them. They even say it in the video, "America was built around cars" and those car need somewhere to store them when not in use. Actually they need two places to be stored technically, one at your residence and one at your destination. Parking lots aren't going away so we may as well try to optimize the usage of the existing space.
@@jullit31 Some parking space is actually necessary and solar for these spots (especially in southwestern states) are not a bad idea, but the time for non-ideal solutions was 20-30 years ago and we've got a massive housing crisis issue in some developing countries with a slowly growing population (and that is without the upcoming global climate migration). Climate change is accelerating at a pace faster than scientists expected. The last thing we need is baby brain infrastructure development like solar parking lots when we know that space is needed for mix used housing, bike lanes, buses/trams and actual small businesses. The alpha generation are going to wind up in cardboard housing at this rate and all for the sake of private metal boxes.
@@SgtDreamz - spoken like a car dependent suburbanite. Why not just live where you can walk/bike/transit to the store?
@@TommyJonesProductionsI agree that it would be best for people to live where transit doesn’t rely on cars, but the reality in the US, especially outside of major cities, is that cars are the primary form of transportation. We can’t ignore that cars are central to many American lifestyles and it will take decades of change to reduce vehicle footprint. The better solution right now is to get solar in as many places as possible, where it makes the most sense at this moment. To take care of our planet change must happen immediately, not in 10 or 20 years.
There is a parking lot at a shopping center near where I live that has a section of it covered with solar canopies. It is so nice in the summer, the air is fresh underneath and being shielded from the rain and snow is another plus. Considering how they make single use spaces "multi use", I wish they were everywhere tbh.
I live in Phoenix and there is a solar canopy at my local grocery store! The shade is incredibly appreciated especially during the summer and i am seeing more put up semi-regularly. Hopefully the trend can continue
I drive a little further in the summer to go to the Frys on Bell & 23rd because of the shaded parking.
Beyond the hilarity of a partnership with Delta (their sustainability page illustrates the beauty of greenwashing), have you considered that an over-engineered solution isn't a solution here?
That perhaps the car-centric high-energy use model is to be questioned?
Alright dude lets get simple. I like living in the country. Its what ive always enjoyed. I have 10 acres of just woods and i love being in it, hunting, hiking, whatever. I cant live in a city and feel comfortable, its just not in me. So i have to drive to the store to get food and medicine etc. Its a 30 minute drive one way, im not biking that 10-15 miles each way just so some people feel better about themselves living in what was once a thriving environment that was just destroyed so you could live close to a starbucks.
@@gus29361 The beauty of it is that you wouldn't need to change anything. No one would force you to give up your car, and in fact most drivers would benefit as traffic will be much much better without everyone being forced to own a car.
The idea is to simply give people the option to live car-free in urban areas by making their neighbourhoods walkable/bikable and having good public transportation for longer distances. As a car enthusiast or a rural resident, you'd be able to just keep your car and keep driving, but with significantly less other cars on the road (not to mention the countless other benefits)
@@BeCuzMe I agree with most of what you say. However you like to think of yourself as categorically different from the Starbucks-drinking urban, but you're just as responsible. Your car, your car's gas, your clothes, your food, etc. They didn't fall out of the sky in an environmentally neutral way. Take responsibility for yourself
every grocery store should have solar on the roof
And several floors of apartments. With solar on top.
No one likes forced legislation
Sensible. Let's do it
Small shops would struggle because of high costs tho
@@zathary564 yes, but in the long term, the costs would become profitable since they're not having to pay electric bills & could possibly sell it back to the grid.
Make America bike and public transport - centric instead of car-centric country. But I feel that vast majority of Americans won't give up their cars, because urbanism in the US is lobbied by car manufacturers.
Change this and you improve so many things including pollution and global warming.
Use Parking lots for solar panels instead of change them to green oasises is using band aid when you lost an arm
Too late for that, maybe in next century
when more of these solar canopies are made, electric cars would also benefit making green energy even more cheaper than gasoline encouraging more people to switch from diesel cars to electric ones.
It’s one thing to rebuild cities which will take a long time, but to create a culture where people see it as normal to ride their bike everywhere is a different challenge.
Absolutely agree. This can still be a good idea for parking places for busses and taxis.
But what if it's all a lie and we make the world a better place for no reason?
This sounds like a good idea but I'm immediately skeptical of it because this video is sponsored by Delta, an airline responsible for enormous amounts of pollution. Their name on anything climate related is going to make me skeptical
good catch.
Exactly, another commenter pointed out that it would be more benefit to society to put housing in underutilized parking lots, then maybe put solar panels on top of the houses.
Additionally, because Delta sponsored this video and are a huge source of pollution, we ought to invest heavily in trains to reduce the number of short-mid distant flights that could easily be served by rail.
Unless you want to live in a world without air travel, there's no reason to hate Delta. If you do want to live in that world, then you are going to be disappointed. Delta doesn't have to lobby to keep air travel around, because almost nobody wants to give it up.
@@JorenMathews where did any of us say we wanted to give up air travel completely? Stop making 💩 up
@@dc2guy2 i think we kinda did tbh. but a still agree with your point, airlines need to be better controlled because they currently are very wasteful and inefficient. we need blimps again.
We rarely get to say this.... Look at the good example New Jersey has set. There are solar parking lots abd roofs everywhere, and expanding further, because they've gotten the incentives right to encourage solar on parking lots to protect green space. All it really takes is an incentive large enough to pay for the extra steel and cement to make the higher array. If you do that, you get access to free land
NJ is not a "right to work" state. The union labor pull in Trenton is enormous. They have pushed extremely high wages for workers. The incentives are based on overall cost. The state is making Bank on whomever installs them and that money gets funneled back into the union halls that lobby for it.
@@fakeaccount4755 that might be true, but private companies would only do this if the cost was low enough to make money with solar. The margins are thin; it's highly unlikely that corruption could be as bad as you say, because that would stop installations. So, what we have are union jobs producing economical green electricity faster than other states, in a state known for expensive land and cloudy weather.
Hardly the indictment you think it is!
The grid is closed to many residential areas in Cumberland, Glouster, and Salem counties. Yet nearly all of the schools and government buildings are stocked up with their solar arrays. Even the landfills have them. AC electric and PSE&G are in business to make and sell electric. They don't want solar because it cuts into their bottom lines. There is a ton of red tape to cut through. Though I agree on the FACT that NJ is leading the way in getting panels up, where are the panels on these mega warehouses that are taking over the "Garden State"? Lobbyist are not pushing for the real benefit of renewable energy, but rather are pushing for it on Public Works projects that are controlled by Local Union Labor agreements.
@@fakeaccount4755 every state is different, some more poorly run than others. What you're saying may be true in MA, but it doesn't take away from NJ's success. You can choose to believe that it's all a union conspiracy, but the fact remains homes and companies would not pay to put solar on their roofs and parking lots if they didn't think they would make money at scale selling or preventing themselves from buying electricity.
Generally the best state policies streamline and define the permitting and terms of electricity sales to the grid, and also allow a tax write-off to make installation cheaper.
I can say in my state, installing an off -peak charger for an EV is very difficult, bc the utility doesn't have staff to meet demand. Similar to your situation in MA, that doesn't mean there's corruption or waste, it means so many people want solar panels or ev chargers, the utility monopoly can't (or maybe doesn't want to) keep up. One thing that could help is to write your state's utility regulator and describe the situation. A fix won't happen overnight, but is possible. If even NJ's crooked government can do it effectively, anywhere can
I'm located in Salem county. I'm a member of IBEW 351. RCL was contracted for a ground mount solar install at my house back in March of this year. I am still in the permit process. The electric company needs to upgrade my transformer at my added expense. This process has been terrible. I got quotes back in 2020 before the incentives were put in and the cost was half of what I am paying now with the SRECs and other incentives. I base my replies on my own personal experience and those that have shared with me their experiences. I've offered to help with the install as much as possible and I'm rejected even as a union electrician. I'm on projects where I install this stuff, and I see the budgets. It's gone out of control.
I remember heading to a Walmart down in T or C, New Mexico and seeing solar canopies and thinking "why isn't this more common?" It's a two birds with one stone situation
Because getting rid of parking lots all together is the better solution.
@@logans3365 True. But in many places, getting rid of cars and parking lots will take a long time and will cost a lot.
We need to decarbonize energy production now and we already have parking lots.
Covering those existing parking lots with solar panels also create shade for people in parking lots. And we need shade to protect us from the heat.
But you 're right. Eventually, we need to get rid of cars. Having solar panels on parking lots is like a band aid, it helps now, but we will have to remove them as soon as we can afford to get rid of parking lots.
Then we should be able to put solar panels elsewhere.
@@logans3365 “Perfect is the enemy of good.” Ideally getting rid of parking lots is a much better idea but that costs a lot of money and changes in infrastructure and way of living. Which would be a long term goal. But this is a great solution that can be implemented now and is practical from an economical and green point of view.
@@logans3365 I mean I’m all for reducing car dependency and increasing public transportation, but T or C has a population of 6,000 people. It’s also in New Mexico which is one of the least populated states with the lowest population density, things are very far away from each other and you really have to drive large distances to get anywhere in New Mexico
As a northeasterner, I've always wondered what people actually call Truth or Consequences in that area, I always chuckle when I see that on google maps. Such an intense name.
Edit: Just read the story of why it's called that, amazing lol. The host of a popular radio show called Truth or Consequences said that they'd air the 10th anniversary episode from the first town that renamed itself after the show. Hot Springs, NM was the first to do it, and here we are lol.
Kinda ironic that Delta is a sponsor of the video about climate change.
Air travel contributes a whooping 3.5 percents of total CO2 emissions 😂
This need to be the top comment!
Classic greenwashing
I don't see how this affects anything? Are they supposed to just stop flying planes?
@@rizizumLet's say as a huge customer they can speed up the RnD and productuon of hybrid/electric planes just by pledging money to buy such planes. But hey , it's much easier to sponsor climate change videos then actually do something about it ...
@@stasgold Electric planes are nowhere close to being viable for large commercial use, the small electric planes make basically no impact in the industry, it's the 747's and what not that pollute the most and i can guarantee you we're not getting these electrified unless we get batteries that can hold 10x more energy. Increasing efficiency and using renewable fuels is a way more viable solution. But still, the original post still makes no sense. Just cause an industry makes a lot of pollution doesn't mean there's nothing being done about it, and it's even worse considering you're just targetting a single company of the industry
the US appears to have already had this kind of thing a political thing. so regardless of if it’s a good idea or makes money, around 50% of people are going to resist this purely because the other side wants it. The fact that France has already done it and the US talks about it like an idea for the future says it all really
Americans value shortsighted individual "freedom", great for experimentations but hostile to well-known concepts that "violate" personal agency.
I'm all for anything that gets rid of parking lots that sit empty all year.
"This video on climate change is sponsored by massive polluter, Delta Airlines"
If you live walking distance to work, school, groceries, gym, shopping, restaurants, transit stations, and parks, then your driving needs will be less, your parking needs as well. Many people can opt for not having a car. This saves a lot of energy as the daily activity of getting around can be done with less fossil fuel consumption. This will save way more energy than the power production of these parking lots.
This is already a thing in Australia, most shopping centres have solar panel roofs
This has already been implemented in the Cochin International Airport, in the state of Kerala, India. It's the first airport in the world to be fully powered by solar energy. The airport has it's dedicated solar power plant that generates the electricity needed for it's day-to-day functioning. Even its parking lots have solar panels on top of them. The Airport also won the coveted Champion of Earth Award in 2018, the highest environmental order instituted by the UN.
They have this at NASNI in California, it's one of those 'no duh' ideas that make you wonder why they haven't already. Especially in places like FL where this could be a selling point for a company to draw in business, "come here, your car won't get as hot"
I don’t know why we don’t have more in Florida. I think because land is still cheap enough farther away from cities or close to highways that it’s just easier to build a solar farm there. I’ve only seen it in Legoland FL.
Talk about greenwashing. No mention of the negative externalities of how much parking we have in cities, how it makes places hotter requiring more AC, which makes places hotter, etc. No mention of how excess parking makes everything farther apart and harder to walk or bike to. No mention of how excess parking increases the cost of housing and goods.
The best way for parking lots to fight climate change is by not existing anymore. The second best is this.
Perfect is the enemy of good
@@CleverAccountName303 sure, but to discuss this topic without even mentioning the negative side of having parking lots in the first place isn’t a matter of good vs perfect, it’s a matter of burying the lede
With some simple policy changes and incentives, solar in parking lots can start happening TOMORROW for little or no cost and it will make a big difference.
Completely redesigning cities and public transit takes just a wee tiny little bit more time and money. A decade at minimum. Stay focused on the goal but gain easy wins when they present themselves.
@@CleverAccountName303 with some simple policy changes, parking lots can start being redeveloped tomorrow too. Many of the parking lots in the US exist not to fill a need for parking but to satisfy an arbitrary requirement in zoning.
Allowing buildings to exist with less or no parking is good, and is how we build a more walkable city just by time alone.
@@birdrocket You are talking about changing the culture of a country as if that's easy or quick to do. Almost all parking lots are privately owned and a policy change is not going to change existing parking lots very much. What you are talking about takes a massive amount of resources and time. That's all great, but Meanwhile, solar installations on parking lots can be profitable and can start being installed immediately with simple policy changes and incentives. But you disparage the idea by calling it green washing because It is something less than your dream change scenario (which ain't happening). Like I said, perfect is the enemy of good. You would rather do nothing because it doesn't meet your standards than Do something that is a practical and available solution with actual green benefits.
High school campuses in my city have had solar canopies for years. They work! Build more panels inside our own cities!
Glad that you cited France for this, I’m very happy that for at least once our country tried something positive.
And there were no strikes for this. Incredible.
Was very excited when I saw that they installed canopies for this at a sportswear shop nearby a few months ago.
It's a really good initiative! I hope we start doing it in the UK soon.
Greenwashing surface parking is one of those ideas that changes next to nothing but gives the illusion of doing something.
Why not change the land use to make people drive less?
I live in Phoenix, my local grocery store has a parking lot covered in solar panels. It's so nice during those 120°+ days and knowing there's more going on is awesome!
Honestly I lived in Southern Californian a while back and they had solar parking lots starting like 2010, especially at Walmarts. Interesting to see that this is a new concept to people
i remember going to school there would be literally hundreds of solar panels in the parking lot in norcal too
california usually leads the way
I'm glad to see that the comment section is informed about the topic
Covering parking lots with solar panels is entrenching the problem of car-dependent building codes and land use even further. Short term it does do something, but it will n e v e r be even a step in the right direction considering the huge challenges the world is facing
You could make the entrance to the canopied parking closest to the business but only wide enough for bicycles, motorbikes, & carts to encourage better forms of transport.
@@gotoastal Yeah, making the space that was used for cars specifically unable to be used by cars would be a solution that actually discourages the car centric design philosophy. That's why that would be way more effective. The design is pretty good, you just need to keep prioritizing more efficient and environmentally friendly modes of transport.
There is something wrong with your reasoning. Redesigning cities is a task for 50 to 100 years or more. Meanwhile we have a problem now. In 50 years, maybe elderly or sick people won't have to drive to the doctor (or have someone else drive them) because they might be able to call a self-driving electric robo-taxi, and call another one when they are ready to go home, but we are not there yet.
The climate crisis is now an immediate problem. Anything that helps stop the burning of coal, oil, or methane is welcome.
I live in Phoenix, Arizona, and I've been saying this for two decades. There's two things this story didn't mention that are worth mentioning.
1. The hard, rock-like materials we build our roads, buildings, and parking lots are great for soaking up and storing heat energy. And, at night, they release that heat energy back into he air to keep temperatures elevated. Deserts and xeriscapes do not have the heat storage capacity of asphalt, concrete and cement. There isn't much heat stored, so there isn't much heat to release back into the atmosphere. Because of this, building solar cover over man-made structures (like buildings and parking lots) can help shade materials to help restore a more natural day-night heat cycle. (This is a small part of why Phoenix's summers have gotten so bad lately.)
2. Desert landscapes are more suited towards wind farms over solar. Vast, wide open stretches of land where winds can blow? While wind farms do require large chunks of land, they don't required anywhere near as much land to be put to the bulldozer. Most of the land in a windfarm can be maintained as native and wild. Sure, the windmill is a hazard to birds, but it's a problem windmill makers are working on. And wind's unreliability is different from solar's unreliability, so they can be paired to produce more power at different times of day. (Rural wind farms with Urban solar farms.)
I wish I had the money to start a company that leases parking lots to make dual use solar farms. I would put my money where my mouth is.
An airline sponsoring a video on climate change, that's rich.
A lot of the school districts in the Silicon Valley area of California installed solar in many of their parking lots years ago. A private school just down the street from me did a sizable pilot project a few years back. The new Seven Trees branch library put them in their parking lot over 5 years ago. We need a lot more, but this old news to us!
The key takeaway should be to use this approach for all existing parking spaces if there is no other alternative and the space can't be turned into some more useful.
After all, there's already been a failure somewhere along the way if you felt the need to put in car parking in the first place.
About a month ago I was driving through Douglas, Arizona and happened upon what I thought was out of place and very unexpected -- a Walmart with a parking lot covered with solar panels! It was super neat and definitely made me think about this concept. I never would've expected to see something like that in a super small border town, but it makes sense!
In Peoria Az there is a Frys grocery with a covered solar parking lot. I wish more retailers would institute this.
Happy to say my former High School has implemented Solar parking already! But not my old college yet.
As someone who’s high school does this, it’s wonderful both in providing shade as well as providing extra power. My school has sometimes avoided blackouts that hit the surrounding neighborhoods because of them
Seems more feasible than whatever Solar Freakin' Roadways was.
They were solar freakin roadways
I’m glad I’m not the only one who immediately thought of solar freak’n roadways.
Yup. Covering buildings and parking lots was always the shortest answer to "how could we get what solar freakin roadways wants but at lower cost and with far fewer practical problems?"
First place I saw this was at Legoland FL (why not at EPCOT, the community of the future I don’t know?), it wasn’t the whole parking lot but they made it even more profitable by offering it as premium parking spaces and charging a little more than the regular parking spot. Brilliant.
As an inventor of a PV parking canopy, I support this concept!
Wow how long ago did you invent it?
Not to mention that these canopies could be designed to include water capture as well, which could address not only some supply issues, but could also mitigate some runoff impact.
Where I live in California it's fairly common to see solar canopies around over parking lots and even at the top of multi level parking structures.
This is actually a pretty common idea, I have seen this in India , infact I have even used these kind of parking couple of years back in 2019, its actually very good for the car as well coz parking in the open here in peak summer can really damage the car over time , not to mention the fact that when u come back car would be ridiculously hot so the shade helps a lot and u got solar panel on top making use of all that sunlight
You see them in Thailand too. Maybe one day a developing country like the US can get these technologies as well as the public transit seen in the rest of the world.
yup. in south east asia you see more and more green building design. Heck, Even my office is a green building with solar panel on the roof top & some of our covered car park have solar panel on top. currently the company is looking at floating solar panel to put in our current hydro dams to generate additional power to our grid.
Parking lots are also where infill development could also be applied, so with this situation, I don’t know which one would be better to put on parking lots.
The auto industry loved that headline
Here in France, Montpellier, there are parking lots for supermarkets with smart solar panels (move with the sun).
Edit: Solar panels become more efficient when they’re water cooled, maybe this heated water could be used for utilities, showers and maybe turn it into steam to turn turbines for extra power (don’t know if it’s possible to generate enough from solar panels tho…)
I’m a pilot who flys from south Florida to north Florida multiple times a week. In the last couple years, there’s been an explosion in solar farm construction. South of Lakeland, where there used to be nothing but orange orchards, pine tree forests, marshes left behind by the phosphate and limestone quarries, et c., there’s now more and more solar farms replacing them. The stretch from lake land to wauchula has definitely seen the most growth that I’ve noticed in the state. The next biggest development I’ve seen has been in the greater Alachua county area. Namely replacing pine tree forests and grazing lands. There’s enough now that you can see it driving along I75. I haven’t seen much evidence of rooftop solar expanding. Although I have seen some businesses putting in parking lot solar.
Uniquely to Gainesville, electricity prices have gotten so high that the University of Florida is building its own natural gas power plant to cut itself off from the local utility provider, but I think that’s more to do with mismanagement by the city than the large growth of solar capacity in the area.
They are doing this with canals too. It also helps to decrease evaporation, so less water loss.
Parking lot canopies would be a great way to help catch rain water to water the properties helping lessen their water usage for landscaping
I don’t disagree with the overall premise for utilizing parking space more efficiently but I do think this would cause more an issue with building more parking lots to generate more power. This in turn would lead to more reliance on cars to get places, because with more/bigger lots places would be further.
I think this in tandem with pushing for better mass transit options and creating a more diverse city scape would be much better as a long term solution. I think we’re looking at electric cars as the silver bullet solution but I think it’s more a piece to the solution.
Mass transits will never become as important in the USA as they are in asia or europe, simply because most american cities were designed around roads and highways and they are usually urban sprawls unlike major cities elsewhere, yes new york city is densely packed but that's just the exception not the norm. So you cannot build mass transit systems like in seoul or singapore in cities like los angeles. Best option is to transition from ICE cars to electric cars with massive improvement in Green electricity production in the USA. And Ignore what other more extreme climate suggestions by activists who can rarely give a sensible solution
@@exelrode no we had cities that were designed around transit then we CHOSE to destroy them in favor of the car. In NYC 60% of the adult population lacks a driver's license because you don't need one to get around. If you build a good system, people will use it. LA's problem is that they refuse to make transit-oriented developments next to stations and then wonder why their system doesn't have enough passengers and revenue, housing policy and transit policy need to be designed hand in hand.
Like what Just Not Bikes said: It wasn't built for the cars, they were bulldozed for the cars.
@@exelrode Almost all US cities were built up around a train station. Someone built a train station there, and then the city sprouted up around it.
Then much later, the local or state government introduced zoning laws, that made building neighborhoods that are accessible without a car, building schools that are accessible by anything other than a car , building shops that are reachable without a car illegal, and defunded the public transport. I agree it cannot be undone overnight though.
ye, because the average american would rather drive in a bus than their own car. This is the culture and you're not going to just change it like that.
Also, nobody thinks its the silver bullet, but its a business case that finally enabled large scale battery development, which in return, will make renewable energy viable
I live in south east asia where it's sunshine all year round. Here we instinctively avoid direct sunlight like vampires when walking outside. More shade, more good. Every bit of shade counts.
we need more solar trees and public fans to cool off and also natural trees...
I’ve had this exact same idea for awhile now, I’m glad to see someone else has thought of it too!
I first thought about this 20 years ago. Glad to see it’s gaining traction.
Practically all car owners would also prefer this, as not only would it cool down the car (or rather, not heat it up) during the heat of the summer, but also be a blocker for the rain.
An additional side effect for businesses installing these is now on rainy or really sunny and hot days, there's an additional draw to a store that has covered parking versus uncovered. So it could bring in customers that might have gone to other stores instead, because they don't have to get wet on the walk in, or because their car won't be as hot when they come back out.
My company did this with our parking lot about a year ago. Significant improvement. While the best solution for the world would not be double downing on every owning a vehicle and needing large parking lots. However this increased the total area we could put solar to greatly expand the amount of renewably sourced energy our company produces. While we still only produce a ~10% of our energy from solar due to being a manufacturing facility, it has made a significant difference.
Shaded parking and solar would definitely be nice
I do wish we had a more walkable infrastructure though, but as for improving the existing infrastructure, this is a cool idea
In South Africa, A lot of Makro stores (Wall Mart owned) have around 30 to 50% of their parking's now covered in Solar. it is quite sunny for most of the year this side (Sub-Saharan weather) so they are working most of the time. Solar has also become a lot more in demand because of loadshedding (scheduled power cuts - This has its own videos explaining what it is, I am and the politics related to it)
Lebo, what is subsaharan weather its the good old tropical hot climate lol! Haibo those new terms neh !
We have one where I live in California at our Wal-Mart and its great helps with the cars heat and provides shade!! Love this idea, would love to see more!(:
Down here on Brazil it is becoming extremaly common to see private owners of property installing solar panels in their homes or buildings
Vitor only in rich exclusive posh post codes . the rest of Brazil that isn't Branquinho is just frying to crisps
@@PHlophe First of all to have any real estate you need to be rich, it is there I just didn't said explicitly. Where I live it is becoming common to see what I said because in my city there is a considerable quantity of rich people, but myself I am lower middle class at best
As a Walmart employee my dude we as associates do not want anything added on that roof. Walmart stores are largely warehouses full of structural issues. If it so much as rains we have to place like 20 buckets and a few big trash cans around the store the store to collect the water because the roof is that leaky. If there’s ever an earthquake it honestly wouldn’t take that much to collapse the building. Onetime a windstorm blew some debris onto the ceiling and it smashed into the little window things they have on the roof and sprayed glass all over the entrance of the store. I once asked what we’re supposed to do if there’s a tornado and my management told me that there wasn’t really a procedure in place for it because the building was a flimsy warehouse. Put them in the parking lot for sure but not on the roof.
This is an excellent idea on many levels. I think it's something everyone can get behind. Even if you don't like electricity, your car will still be covered from the sun. The big box stores should start in Phoenix. We would love it.
I've often thought about this and wondered why it hasn't happened much yet. The acres of parking lots that the big box stores have would provide a lot of space. At the very least, they could help provide power for the store to run lighting and power the refrigeration needs of the store. Charging stations would be a big help to EV adoption. They could be either free or accept credit card payments.
You should think about why we have such massive parking lots in the first place. Why we can't build density like in the past, like in Asia and Europe. Car centric government policies - zoning, parking requirements, minimum lots sizes, height restrictions, set backs, federal highway subsidies, poor pedestrian and bike infrastructure etc etc etc.
@@Basta11 The point is, this is what we have. Since the 50s, the US started designing cities and towns around cars. America loves the freedom of having a car to go when and where we want. There are probably more cars than people. That won't change in a short time. Stores like Walmart have huge parking lots because of huge crowds during the holidays like Christmas. They also host things like swap meets and farmers markets. The parking lots are full then. Building mass transit systems is very expensive and disruptive. The will is not there to do that. European countries and the UK are tiny in comparison to the US. People want to be free to drive hundreds of miles to vacation and visit family and friends. It's also much cheaper than flying and more pleasurable than taking a bus or train. That might change when autonomous vehicles start becoming available. But it won't happen overnight. In the future, car ownership might be a thing of the past.
@@tims8603 LOL. I don’t think you understand what freedom means. Land use policies in the US are some of the most restrictive in the first world. If people love their cars so much, then there would be need for massive government support.
@@Basta11 The answer is penises - they build density. Europe, the US, and China are all about 10 million square km. The US has 330 million people, Europe 750 million, and China 1.4 billion.
The problem with density is it favors the rich. Rather than own a home, you become a serf to the wealthy. Ultra-urbanism benefits people like Trump and Jared Kushner who are landlords or urban properties.
Condominiums are a temporary solution. They start off as luxuries that people buy at a high price with low maintenance. Over a few decades the maintenance cost skyrockets which results in increasing monthly payments. As the monthly payment goes higher, the value of the condo decreases. Eventually the condo becomes worthless and a maintenance nightmare. Then a private investment group buys it out, renovates it up to code, and then rents it out again.
The right solution is owning your building. We need to make buildings which Americans can afford with limited street frontage which allows for public transportation viability. We also need to make sure that these urban areas are safe so that we can trust public transportation enough to let kids ride it.
I feel like this is ingenius. I think this video makes us change our way of thinking to look at the preexisting structures and spaces we still have and create innovation solutions.
What wasn't mentioned is the impact solar canopies will have on the heat island effect, primarily generated from parking lots. Covering them will reduce the amount of radiant heat generated, and aid to the reduction of large city's ever increasing temperatures.
I've always wondered why nationwide big box stores don't cover their rooftops with solar panels. Imagine if every Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, etc. were covered in panels. We wouldn't need to build fields of panels out in rural areas, or cut down trees to make room for them.
Just my two cents, but personally I think the more sensible approach would be to cover all the irrigation canals with solar, that way you decrease amount of water that turns into vapor, increasing efficiency of the canals and cooling of the panels at same time, so that they work better.
Other good one that I've seen was turning roads themselves into solar. No idea what happened to that but there was some people testing them as a parking lot material. The amount of area that is taken up by our road systems is so massive that you would easily generate more than needed from those alone. Storage is more of an issue than generating power, also if you build your power grid to follow the roads, maintaining it is super easy and if road is the power source then that is even better.
You _could_ build solar canopies over highways, but they'd need well over 4 meters of clearance, plus the support pillars have to be well outside the margins of the roadway, and even so, you can expect something very fast and very heavy to crash into one every once in awhile. Which would be not just dangerous - imagine driving under large sections of thick glass roof that could be made to fall on you at any time - it would also be super expensive to repair/replace when that happens.
For those reasons, I suspect covering buildings and parking lots will be the low-hanging fruit for a long time yet, in terms of cost and practicality.
@@ps.2 I mainly ment using road surface as a solar panel, not covering the roads themselves under a canopy. Road surfaces are massive as an area, if we could harness even tiny bit of them, they would add up very quickly.
I do agree though, parking lots, rooftops and irrigation canals are the cheapest and easiest solution, so those are going to come first, and hopefully some of the roadsides as well.
Yes, we should build solar on canals too for all the reasons you mentioned! 👍
But there's a big advantage to building solar on rooftops and parking lots because the power is being produced *and* used locally. This power bypasses and unloads the grid.
@@ehta2413i would think that the solar panel road would get worn 10x faster and cost 10x more than just normal road just to be covered by a traffic jam
Thought of the same solar road thing too but roads get destroyed easily already
Can we please stop assuming I'll need to drive everywhere? I will GLADLY walk 😭
Especially in a place like Phoenix, the reduction of the Ubran Heat Island by covering blacktop parking lots is a huge side benefit.
OMG FINALLY! I've been screaming this for years! Every single larger parking lot should have solar panels. I would almost want to mandate it but I am a libertarian so I would settle for tax breaks for businesses that cover parking lots of X spaces or more do this. Every big box roof too.
Now it makes sense that I got a Delta Airlines ad
this confused me for a second as an arizonan because this is all over tempe that i forgot that this isn't commonplace in a lot of places - thanks for the video!
When I see a video about renewables in the the US, its like looking in the past.
Hold on a minute... a video about how to fight climate change sponsored by an Airline company? Smells a lot like greenwashing. Wouldn't expect Vox to do that check 1:05
Michigan State University has solar panels over many of their parking areas to help run their facilities. It also reduces the need to clear and salt those parking lots under the canopies
The beginning and end of why this is a good idea is you get a shady spot to park your car in.
Imagine realizing that the embarrassing power density of solar is an actual problem, making a video about it and avoiding to mention the only real solution, good job as always
Great video! Are we talking about putting the canopies over freeways? We love to forget about the 3rd dimension when we develop infrastructure. Parking structures vs parking lots, solar farms vs solar canopies.
Way more expensive and dangerous than over buildings and parking lots, I expect. Higher clearance, wider clearance (have to put your support pillars well outside the highway shoulders, not next to or between lanes of traffic), and even so, every once in awhile a vehicle is going to spin out of control and take out a support pillar. Imagine the joy of driving under these panels of Damocles, huge sections of very thick glass that could come crashing down from 14 ft up at any time.
Trains.
You been watching too much AdamSomething
@@y0uCantHandlethere's no such thing as "too much Adam Something"
@@TheAmericanAmerican you got me there 😅
The land east of Flagstaff, AZ is perfect for solar farms.
It is at 7000 feet in altitude.
There is more energy available because the sunlight doesn't have to go through the thickest part of the atmosphere.
I heard the PV panels get 30% more power output up on these high-altitude areas.
You could also try Colorado Springs for the same reason.
Parking lot solar is something I've been advocating for for a while. Cover for the cars in the lots to keep 'em cooler in the summer and reduce how much sunlight is absorbed by asphalt and radiated back into the air. It'd put solar energy right where it's needed most!
As an advocate, what would you suggest about the immense heat gain to the Solar PV from the asphalt, car parked underneath it as well as exposure to sun? How would you mitigate that heat gain as solar PV are heat “allergic”, for any given gain in temperature the efficiency drops significantly.
@@ruiyang4668Passive heat sinks driven into the ground along the posts where the temperature is between 55 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit. It's how a computer CPU is kept from burning up in less than 4 seconds. And yes, I've done the experiment.
We need less car infrastructure, period. The amount of energy generated from whatever this is is a drop in the bucket compared to all the asphalt needed to pave roads and build our cities for cars.
So no.
The argument I hear against them in the far north is that it is difficult to plow around them (damage risk to the supports, need for more vertical clearance). Yes, they might reduce the snow on parked cars sometimes, but there is drifting and the snow sliding off the panels onto the drive lanes to deal with. I would love to hear some solutions that take these conditions into account.
Highly unlikely that cars will drift in a plowed and salted parking lot unless they're really booking it, in which case the driver doesn't belong in a parking lot (or in a car for that matter).
I don't really get how it would be difficult. You either put them on supports wide and tall enough for the current plow, or you get a smaller plow.
Europe can clear bike lanes too narrow for a car, so I don't see why it should be a problem to do the same here.
It's a waste to deploy any solar panels in the far north where they will generate far less power than in a sunny desert.
As an architectural landscape designer I TRIED to implement this in Louisiana 30 - 50 years ago. I got laffed at by the owners of the parking lots. So many ways we could be way ahead of the game. A win-win for the Earth and humans. Too many people taking over habitat and destroying soil and water in the name of progress.
now its your turn to say , look who's laffin' now.
I visit the US every few uears and I’m honestly amazed how car parks are just absolute unnecessarily massive.
There’s a complex at my city that uses panels in parking lots and I’ve been asking for years why this idea isn’t as big as it should be. It’s great to see you addressed it so it can begin to catch on in future construction proyects.
If only we had invented trains to move people instead of cars.
There use to be a train in almost every small town, no matter how remote in America. Then cats started lobbying and literally destroyed other competitors.
We shouldn't even have many parking lots. They should be parking garages or underneath existing buildings. Now the top of them would be good for solar
That Delta Airlines sponsorship wasn't a fun twist :))