Posts Tagged → Solar power

Solar panels were blamed for wiping out fields, but birds and insects are now rewriting the story beneath them

OKDiario: Solar panels were blamed for wiping out fields, but birds and insects are now rewriting the story beneath them

Done right, fields where solar panels are now being installed are coming back, healthier, and supporting numerous kinds of wildlife, birds included.

For years, the fear around solar farms has been easy to picture. Rows of dark panels, wide open fields, hot metal under the sun, and barely a bird in sight.

New data from Spain is now pushing back against that image. In several solar plants studied in 2025, researchers found more bird species inside the facilities than in nearby agricultural control areas, suggesting that well-managed solar farms can sometimes become unexpected refuges for wildlife rather than empty industrial spaces.

Link.

Mother Jones: Putin Tried to Freeze Ukraine. Instead, He Sparked an Energy Revolution

Mother Jones: Putin Tried to Freeze Ukraine. Instead, He Sparked an Energy Revolution

Russia is bombing fossil-fueled power plants, so the country is building solar and wind. From the story:

Wind and solar arrays with independent transmission lines are scattered over the landscape, which makes them harder to hit and easier to repair. “A coal power station [is] a large single target that a single missile could take out,” says Jeff Oatham of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy company and its largest private energy investor. “You would need around 40 missiles to do the equivalent amount of capacity damage at a wind farm.” 

“Attacking decentralized solar power installations is not economically rational,” says Ukrainian energy expert Olena Kondratiuk. “Missiles and drones are expensive, and significantly disrupting such systems would require a large number of strikes, while the overall impact on the energy system would remain limited.”

Link.