Daley, Beth. The Conversation. (2021, February 11). Solar panels in Sahara could boost renewable energy but damage the global climate – here’s why. Retrieved February 12, 2020, from https://theconversation.com/solar-panels-in-sahara-could-boost-renewable-energy-but-damage-the-global-climate-heres-why-153992

The Sahara Desert is a likely place that large solar farms could be used for large amounts of power. However, the solar panels are generally darker than the ground they cover, absorbing more heat and remitting it, spreading this heat on a global scale. A study in the Science magazine suggests that the albedo of the Sahara would lower and if only 20% of the land was covered with solar panels, a positive feedback loop would occur in which a temperature difference between the land and ocean becomes larger, producing more rain in the area and a greener Sahara. This greener Sahara would absorb more heat and cause more rain to fall. While this greener Sahara may be beneficial in some cases, unintended consequences would likely offset any positive effects of this change. By adding solar panel farms, more heat would be produced and spread, contributing to climate change even if no carbon dioxide is released.

While this is important information for the future of renewables, it is unfortunate. This article provides a significant downside of solar energy that should be considered as we move forward with renewable energy and technology. While the threat of this occurring is not close to being imminent, it is something that needs to be addressed when considering renewable options. This also emphasizes the importance of diversifying the power grid, as the domination of one form of technology could be devastating to the planet in similar ways to nonrenewable energy as shown in this example. Overexploiting the Sahara in this way is clearly not much better, if at all, than exploiting our nonrenewable energy sources. Solar technology holds a lot of potentials but may need to be further refined and developed in order to have even less negative impacts on the planet and our land. This article makes me hope that there are solutions proposed that would mitigate or eliminate this problem entirely. This problem may still be decades away and luckily has been foreseen relatively quickly but it seems like focusing on developing less-devastating forms of solar energy should be a priority.