They are also burning the bagasse from the crushed sugar cane to fire the boilers to make electricity in the sugar mills and calling it green energy - They don't utilise scrubbers in the flues to clean the resultant "Smoke" from particulates out of the Carbon monoxide and dioxide gasses produced. Whereas coal fired power plants do.

I think what they are saying is that they are using a waste material to generate power, not petroleum products.

With the risk of getting "bashed up", I'll state that there is nothing wrong with the production of CO2 - all plant life relies on it. It's the out of control generation by us (mankind) & the huge reduction of forests through out the world.

One of my grievances is the huge areas of farm & grazing land, forests, native trees that are being cleared to make way for "Green" solar farms! I have no complaint with the use of solar but I wonder of the impacts that these farms will have in producing erosion (plants & tree roots hold the soil together) & dust storms. When I get home in a few days, it will be interesting to see the erosion at the new Kelso (Townsville) solar farm. It replaced some productive mango orchards.

Warren-Pat_01 wrote:

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One of my grievances is the huge areas of farm & grazing land, forests, native trees that are being cleared to make way for "Green" solar farms! I have no complaint with the use of solar but I wonder of the impacts that these farms will have in producing erosion (plants & tree roots hold the soil together) & dust storms.

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I don't usually rise to the bait, but you cannot be serious? On what did you base that broad ranging statement - on the basis of one solar farm you know of that replaced an orchard (which I hate to tell you, are not native forests, but a form of water guzzling, chemical fertiliser and pesticide intensive monoculture, which have replaced our native forests). I've been in the solar industry for ten years now and I can assure you that the majority of solar farms are either on the rooves of commercial buildings or built on marginal land - it's simply cheaper that way than to clear trees or buy up prime farmland! And by the way, vegetation is encouraged to grow back below the panels as it reduces dust build-up and keeps temperatures lower, both of which make the panels more productive.

Here's a project we just finished building, and are in the process of commissioning right now. I can assure you not a single tree was harmed, and hey - we even left the dead one on the right standing 

 

And by way of contrast, here's a coalmine in Australia...

 

 

I'll let you decide which one destroys more "farmland, forests, and native trees", and contributes to soil erosion and dust storms? And that's without even getting into the discussion about greenhouse gas emissions...

 

 

-- Edited by Mamil on Monday 11th of February 2019 09:00:46 PM

That project is single axis tracking, which is quite unusual these days, as with panels being so cheap it's usually more economic to just add 20% or so extra panels than install and maintain a tracking system. But, the customer for that particular project was an Aboriginal land owners corporation and they wanted as small a footprint on the land as possible.