Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming

by Paul Hawken

The first solar PV farms went up in the early 1980s. Now, these utility-scale installations account for 65 percent of additions to solar PV capacity around the world. They can be found in deserts, on military bases, atop closed landfills, and even floating on reservoirs, where they perform the additional benefit of reducing evaporation. If Ukrainian officials have their way, Chernobyl, the site of a mass nuclear meltdown in 1986, will house a 1-gigawatt solar farm, which would be one of the world’s largest. Whatever the site, farm is an appropriate term for these expansive solar arrays because photovoltaics are literally a means of energy harvesting. The silicon panels that make up a solar farm harvest the photons streaming to earth from the sun. Inside a panel’s hermetically sealed environment, photons energize electrons and create electrical current—from light to voltage, precisely as the name suggests. Beyond particles, no moving parts are required.