US Coalition of Green Orgs Call For Solartop On Canals

A recent vision document was released by the coalition of environmental justice and conservation organizations in the USA. The document suggested placing solar panels over canals to generate power and to reduce evaporation. This, it claims would deliver reduce the loss in evaporation from drought caused by climate change. In addition to this, they launched a pilot project to install solar panels, which is similar to the initiatives launched by India and Lebanon. With this initiative, the bureau claims it could generate power for 20 million homes.

This document is part of the recent initiative that was launched by the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation. In its recent letter that it gave to the Interior Department and Bureau, it suggested that installing solar panels over open canals would generate power and reduce loss caused by evaporation’.

The letter further elaborated that ‘By focusing on the deployment of solar energy on water through the conveyance canals, the department would be able to meet the requirements of the Energy Act of 2020 mandate to deploy 25 GW of onshore renewable energy on public lands without destroying a single additional acre of habitat,”.

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The move, coming as it does at a time when the US is truly pushing the boundaries in renewables in the Biden administration, has a high chance of finding support within the government for trials, and a possible large scale adoption post that. The issue of water conservation is also becoming a massive one as water shortages across key states fed by the colorado river have shown in the past decade.