Op-ed: Solar energy can help heal the planet

By Robert Nied

If you are on social media, you are likely encountering multiple posts claiming that solar energy will destroy farmland (often illustrated with fake AI images).

It is part of an extensive fossil fuel industry disinformation campaign. Almost every post includes the phrase: “put solar on parking lots and roofs, not on farmland.” It is a truly ingenious approach to propaganda. Never mind that solar arrays are remarkably compatible with farming, reduce operational costs and help keep farmers on the land.

Never mind that commercial solar facilities are rarely sited on tillable farmland unless farming is no longer viable — often due to the exhaustion of soil fertility because of decades of chemical-intensive mono-cropping.

This disinformation campaign is underway because the fossil fuel industry is terrified of the ascendance of solar energy, especially at utility scale. Solar, paired with battery storage, can replace fossil fuels, and slow or even stop the horrific damage to our planet caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas.

The most ironic and dangerous part of the industry’s concerted attack on large scale solar is that it never mentions that the fossil fuel infrastructure has been incredibly destructive to farm and ranch lands, covering and often contaminating, nearly 9 million acres of U.S. agricultural land with fracking fields, flaring towers, methane compressor stations, pipelines, coal mines, oil derricks and massive refineries that are often surrounded by cancer plumes and high rates of respiratory illness.

Agrivoltaics, the science of integrating solar energy production with farming and grazing, is the future of a clean and verdant planet and the future of sustainable agriculture. The fossil fuel industry is desperately trying to stop solar energy production. We must see through their polluted haze of disinformation, support renewable energy, and begin to heal the planet for the next generations.

Robert Nied is a Chester resident.