155 – Agroecological Possibilities of Solar Panels

[00:00:07] Lucie: Hi, and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. My name’s Lucie Halzelgrove Planel, I’m a Social Impact Scientist and anthropologist, and I’m here today with David Stern. Hi David. Oh, one of the founding directors.

[00:00:19] David: How are you?

[00:00:20] Lucie: Good thanks. Sorry to forget to mention your role within IDEMS.

[00:00:25] David: It doesn’t matter, it’s probably something we should stop doing, but I don’t know how we should change our intros.

Anyway, let’s dig into today’s topic. What are we discussing today?

[00:00:33] Lucie: So you shared recently an article about solar panels in the desert, and, surprisingly, the aspect is about them contributing to positive ecological change.

[00:00:46] David: Exactly. Yes. This was what was so interesting and so exciting to me that there was a study in China, I believe, where it was looking at the effect of solar panels in desert regions on biodiversity. And broadly finding that it had a huge increase, the shade of the solar panels, on increasing local biodiversity, which is huge.

This is basically stating that you could be not only generating power in desert regions, but also using that to increase the biodiversity, to reduce desertification, to increase the natural life cycles, increase agricultural output in these specific contexts.

Now, I’ve not seen this, and all the studies around this, I am not an expert, but I was really excited, because of the work we do in West Africa, by the potential. Here’s an intervention, which I was always wondering, there’s lots of sun in the desert, is turning this into a huge electrical farm, which could then support electricity for the whole country and maybe beyond, is this something which would be positive, negative? And to hear that it could actually reduce desertification, it could increase biodiversity, you could potentially be regaining agricultural land. This is huge.

[00:02:30] Lucie: Yeah, there’s several aspects to think through there. So I think the paper found, the research found that, because I think as you mentioned, because the solar panels were creating shade and therefore a cooler environment, that more microorganisms were able to survive and even flourish. Which is sort of the opposite of what’s happening in other solar panel, well, in solar panels in other regions.

[00:02:52] David: Yeah, and I think one of the key things is that broadly the solar panels are playing the role of trees in some sense.

[00:03:00] Lucie: That’s a nice way of putting it.

[00:03:02] David: You know, your solar panels are absorbing the sunlight, they’re creating shade, they’re using sunlight to produce, but they’re also creating an environment which is less extreme, and so on. So chopping down trees to put in solar panels is a really bad idea. But in environments where it’s difficult for trees to take root and to be able to create this, this is the obvious place where it should be ecologically good to use solar panels to be able to potentially really transform those environments.

And it might be that this is something you don’t think of over a forever period, but you think of as a way to maybe then introduce trees into the environment over a, let’s say, 30 year period. And maybe you are actually turning deserts into forests. This is something where I don’t know what this could be doing, but the possibilities are incredible.

[00:04:01] Lucie: Okay. Yeah, so I’m seeing more of a sort cycle thing, because I think they say anyway that these solar farms, they don’t have a very long life cycle. And so if in their sort of initial phase they can increase the fertility of the soil and the environment and sort of set up a context where it is possible to then put in some plants and let some life start existing again. Because you were mentioning doing agriculture again, to me that was too much of a big step suddenly. But now I’m sort of starting to see a bit more of a cycle and a journey for how it could get that way.

[00:04:32] David: And it’s something where I’ve been, no, I’ve lived in some of these environments and I’ve thought about them a lot. And in all that time, one of the things which people always talked about was the problem of desertification, and the fact that the desert region is expanding, it’s sort of gobbling up agricultural land because of the natural cycles which come.

And of course one of the only success stories I ever heard about fighting desertification was trees. There’s a few other things, but it’s mainly trees are so incredibly powerful at this and they produce barriers which actually reduce or slow down desertification in different ways. And there’s research, which I’ve seen, which relates to that seems very positive.

But to actually now think, well, wait a second, we could be using modern technologies, we could be using the fact that, and this is what’s really exciting countries like Niger, Mali have huge amounts of desert land, which if you think of this as a solar resource, this is like sitting on a gold mine. You have real access to solar energy at a scale which would be incredible.

Now, I’m not saying this is the long term solution in any way because there’s all sorts of other things which come in, and I don’t think the technologies are there to think and to understand the long term. But to think about the fact that this could be over the next 20 years an incredible source of revenue for these countries where they turn their unproductive desert regions into highly productive solar farms, as well as improving the environment in those regions. Oh, that is big. This is exciting.

I can see development in a region, in a context where it was always difficult to imagine how it wouldn’t be exploitative. But this is something where, done right, it could be this amazing win-win. Now, doing it right is a whole different matter, but still.

[00:06:41] Lucie: And I’m thinking there partly, yeah, in terms of the exploitative aspect that you just mentioned, and also in terms of agroecology. At least in our work, we don’t really talk much about solar panels and that sort of technology. A lot of our work with the Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems in West Africa is much more about farming systems. It’s much more about the actual sort of farming the land. So I’m interested to hear your thoughts on how that fits in with, or how it could fit in.

[00:07:10] David: Well, there’s a thought, which is at the back of my mind, which I’ve always had, which is that within the sort of farming systems, if we look at the whole, we need to think about opportunities. And opportunities for alternative employment, alternative skills, and so on, I always come back to digital skills and fundamentally digital skills require access to power and access to the internet.

What’s so interesting is they do not require, in the same way access to good roads, which are really expensive to construct. Whereas agriculture and farming does if you want to get to markets. So you know, the markets are really determined by the transport mechanisms. If you are remote from good roads, then you are very isolated, often you are down to subsistence in agriculture because you can’t really sell and you can’t bring things in too easily and so on.

So let’s think about that really remote context of agriculture. Well, if solar power were added to the mix in a way which enhanced their environment, and actually therefore could enhance the agriculture, I don’t know what this might be, but it might be that you have some form of gardens, which now are able to be done under the solar panels in certain ways, in a small scale.

So the solar panels also give you the electricity for your household, which means that, whatever you think of Musk or not, Starlink means that in Niger, anywhere in Niger, in theory, you can now access good internet through Starlink, well, this means you could have digital jobs. Your kids could in theory, have digital jobs with power, with internet, and with a low cost of living because they’re living in an environment where they have the farming, they have a lifestyle which could be great.

[00:09:08] Lucie: I’m sort of hearing from what you’re saying that instead of having, you know, one large farm somewhere far out in the desert, you could have each village having its own farm, you know, a community sort of solar farm.

[00:09:21] David: Or even a household solar system. You know, in these very desert regions where you are growing in almost the desert, this is something where this could be at a household level. And that could mean that you could be off the grid.

[00:09:33] Lucie: Exactly. But also otherwise, I think like they had in the, well, they sometimes have in the UK, if you produce excess power, then you can sell it back to the grid or something.

[00:09:41] David: That would be wonderful as well. But then you need to have that infrastructure built. You know, this is in some sense jumping ahead. What I’m saying is that this could have implication for small holder farmers in the context within which we work, as part of the mix of them being able to have a sort of very local circular economy where their energy demands are generated from within, and you know, their gateway, their road to the world is the internet.

All I’m saying is this is quite exciting, that this is actually, things like this are now possible. And that is a tie in to this sort of agriculture and the agroecology that we’re doing. The other tie in that I see is, okay, let’s think now about these big solar farms in the desert. Actually, what might that look like? You know, big regions of the desert, which are basically at the moment unusable, the land is really unusable, now converting that into solar farms where you have, of course you have to have people living there to manage them.

You know, either you have to import a lot of food or you need to bring agriculture and self-sustaining agriculture into the desert. Now, there are interesting ways to do this, which are more high tech rather than low tech. But now you are exporting electricity. So that means the fact that you can import things into the system to be able to actually, maybe start growing things locally, but then you could go beyond that.

If you are getting the environment to change from the solar panels, that means that you could accompany this with elements of agricultural innovation in these contexts. This could create whole new communities, this could be, you know, I don’t know what this could do. It is a new set of opportunities where you are using land in ways, which is different to land use that I’ve ever thought of before.

You can think of this simplistically, and which is how I’ve always seen these ideas of these big projects. You know, there have been many times where I’ve heard people talk about using the Sahara Desert to basically generate the power that’s needed for Europe. The potential there, the solar power potential there is enormous. But I’d always seen that as being extractive, and so I’d never got very interested in that as an idea.

Now I can see how this could be something which is not only a supply, but it’s constructive. You’re building communities, you’re building jobs, you’re building workforces, you are building opportunity. Not just because you are extracting sunlight or power from sunlight, but you are actually creating, you are improving the environment while you are doing so, you are actually building the communities potentially around what you are doing. Towns of the future could emerge from this in ways that could be extremely exciting.

I don’t know. I’d never thought of it before, and that research suddenly opened my mind to the fact that, well, of course, if you provide shade, you essentially are capturing humidity, you are reducing the temperature, of course, in a desert context, this can improve the ecosystem.

[00:13:11] Lucie: There’s so much light in a desert context that…

[00:13:15] David: It’s amazing and it’s so obvious to think of this now as an environmental investment rather than just an extraction of energy.

[00:13:27] Lucie: Yeah. I’m going straight to the sort of how to, you know, the actual, what would it look like and the concreteness of it, and so imagining sort of oases, you know, like, solar oases perhaps. But then I come to the fact of, well, what about water? You’d always, you know, if there’s random communities and pockets, strategically placed pockets perhaps, then what would happen to water? Like how would you get water there? Because I really like the idea, but I’m getting, I’m having stumbling blocks.

[00:13:55] David: What you’re doing is brilliant. Let’s go down that rabbit hole a little bit. You mentioned the word oasis. Well, the point is there is groundwater in the deserts, not everywhere, not always accessible, but groundwater in the desert does exist, and it might exist at different depths. So now where do you place them? Do you place them based on convenience with roads or do you place them and actually build them around convenience of water access through underground water sources.

[00:14:24] Lucie: Uhhuh.

[00:14:25] David: So you are actually literally creating oases of life. And of course, because you are building on this, well, that might mean that in those places something deep rooted might be able to access water. And then you might be genuinely creating new oases of life because you are changing the local ecosystem. So this could, you know, literally create oases in the desert.

[00:14:49] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:14:50] David: That oases aren’t something which just is happening randomly, these are happening because of the geological features and so on. So you could build off that and actually say, well, what would it take to actually think of this whole process as enabling the creation of these oases.

And of course, over time, if we do go down the route of thinking that the role of the solar energy generation isn’t there to just extract it forever, but it is part of this environmental, local environmental transformation creating oases. And then maybe you are expanding it out. So you’ve created an oasis, your original region is now sort of fertile, you’ve got trees, you’ve therefore got natural shade and so on.

And your next set, they get built around it. And so you are actually gradually expanding these out. Oh, and now you’re creating local weather systems that might emerge. Who knows? You could, you could be reversing desertification. This is not just relevant for the Sahara, you know, the sahelian region. But what about the Middle East? This was the Fertile Crescent. This didn’t need to be as desertified as it has been.

And there there’s been a lot of interesting work which has happened. There’s a lot of money there, which is able to take some more advanced ideas and actually try them out. So it might be that it is more in the Middle East, that some of these things will get fleshed out and built out first rather than the Sahara where there’s more challenges. But it is much easier for me to imagine this happening in the Middle East where you also have deserts and you have huge problems around desertification.

But these ideas and the idea of using high tech solutions, you know, this is absolutely imaginable. And so that would be an easier entry point. And it is not beyond expectation that if this was happening in the Middle East and it was successful there, then there are already some big collaborations, a lot of development in places like the Sahelian region has been funded by Saudi Arabia and other places in the Middle East who have picked up and supported infrastructure development in interesting ways. And so it’s absolutely imaginable that if the technologies are built and refined in the Middle East, that they then translate.

Of course, the Middle East isn’t the only place with deserts. There’s deserts in the US there’s deserts in Asia, you know, a lot of the world has desert regions. The Sahara Desert just happens to be where my heart is.

[00:17:26] Lucie: Can I also, so, okay, well, at least someone living very far from a desert my imagination is of an empty place. But in fact they are very much lived in spaces and I think especially people go through them like the places of passage. I’m trying to imagine the social changes that that would create.

[00:17:45] David: Yes, exciting, interesting. I have no idea. You know, who owns the land? These are really interesting questions. Land ownership becomes a really interesting issue. If you want to go and build a solar farm in the desert in Niger, who are you actually negotiating land rights with? These are really interesting, difficult questions.

It’s interesting to me, now, of course, the alliance between Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali actually could be quite powerful in this, in them actually thinking about land rights in the desert and what this might mean for them as a society. Because they had problems because Nigeria turned off the tap for electricity, I believe. You know, this was, I believe one of the challenges that they had, and one of the reasons they had power cuts for a long time was because they were reliant on coastal countries for their electricity.

[00:18:33] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:18:34] David: Now imagine they suddenly become exporters of electricity to their neighbors. This is now put a change in power relations in a way, which is very exciting and very interesting. And I’ve spent enough of my life in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali that I know that the challenges of these environments and whatever people may think about what’s happened with the politics there and other things and so on, I want these countries to succeed.

If they can succeed, we are on a good track because they are such a difficult environment. If we, not we as people, but if we as society, as a global society, if we can’t have societal structures which enable countries like them to succeed, we’re going to be worsening in equality, we are going to be having problems with migration, with all sorts of other things.

Whereas here you have solutions where they can, with dignity, become important exporters of a natural resource they have, which is sunshine.

[00:19:45] Lucie: A renewable natural resource.

[00:19:47] David: A renewable natural resource, exactly, which is in great demand. And they can use this for their own development first and foremost.

[00:19:56] Lucie: Exactly.

[00:19:57] David: It is something where, oh, it’s exciting idea.

[00:20:03] Lucie: It is. Yeah. We’ll see if anybody catches onto it or catches onto the possibilities.

[00:20:10] David: I am afraid this is the first time I’m talking about it, but I’m now going to be sort of bringing this up with people in a number of different forums because I believe there is something really big which could come out of this. I think it is a totally, it can get different people thinking about solar energy in a very different way and about the role solar energy can play in terms of not just its environmental benefit in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and so on, but in terms of improving the environment.

[00:20:48] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:20:48] David: And the fact that in other contexts this is potentially controversial, and, you know, solar farms have their controversy, the fact that they have been a positive environmental impact to desert regions, once that is known, once that’s understood, it’s a no brainer that it’s something that we globally should be working on and should be using.

[00:21:14] Lucie: Well, great. Thank you very much, David for sharing your thoughts and ideas about that.

[00:21:19] David: Thank you for engaging with it as well. It’s a topic which I’ve, it’s just hit me as something which I really am excited about. Thank you, it’s been a nice discussion.