Why Not Cover Ugly Parking Lots With Solar Panels?

But it’s hard to think of an urban area better to use than the parking lot. Besides being unpleasant on the eye, they’re normally pretty large, meaning they have great energy-generating potential.

According to a 2021 study Pearce coauthored, installing solar panels over the parking lots of the 3,751 Walmart supercenters spread across the US alone could generate the same amount of electricity to that of around a dozen coal-fired power plants. (Even if you account for the part-time nature of solar power, Pearce believes you could permanently shut down two, maybe even three such plants in sunnier regions if covering these Walmart lots.) In France, the government believes solar canopies could generate up

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