New York City and San Francisco are trying to re-think how the airspace they use to get around America’s biggest and most popular cities isn’t built for their needs.
According to new reports by WSJ, New York aims to reduce emissions by growing 3,800 acres of rooftop solar farms in New York. The city is considering a strategy to use the underutilized and shifting airspace around its airports as a literal place to grow its own power supply and access to the sun.
If you fly any of the above airports, then you might have noticed this kind of flying electricity.
“We are storing energy to burn when there is no sun,” says Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti of the city’s new project.
It’s all happening because underutilized airspace around the airports is already populated by airliners, planes with full loads, regional jets and tourist planes, so now, after a few years of market research, they are spinning off the unused electrical surplus.
A solar farm on top of the Twin Towers in New York City currently generates enough energy to power about 85,000 homes.
Investment groups see an avenue for making returns on this investment from the selling of power at peak time, and the airlines see the money they can make transporting cargo to and from airports.
According to Pacific Gas and Electric, the power that goes through airports in Los Angeles are used to provide energy to airport terminals, and in nearby and surrounding communities. In addition, air freight deliveries are transported via those roads, and air carriers like Boeing fly cargo to destinations throughout North America and beyond from other points at airports across the United States.
Two out of the top three airports in the United States in terms of passenger volume are in California. In Los Angeles International, which served 103 million passengers in 2015, more than 80% of all arrivals and departures over the course of the day is done by air. In San Francisco International, the top number of passengers passing through those same gates was 75 million people in 2015.
Gloat, California, sits on the edge of Yosemite National Park near the Cascade Range.
According to the company that is looking at acquiring the farms, this recently emerging sustainable market could be a tremendous opportunity for energy storage and renewable power solutions to the grid, and a complete alternative to natural gas plants.
What is causing the climate to seriously falter? It is, however, too little attention being paid to those in the developing world who want to access the benefits of renewable energy, or simply a support for the problem is being more concerned with cleaning the Earth in an unhealthy way.
The number one culprit is the burning of non-renewable fuels in this world. As China turns toward energy production that may be powered by burning the dirtiest fuels, because, as an emerging economy, they need to move their millions and millions of people out of poverty, and they need to do it quickly.
The majority of them prefer to invest in landfills to help bury their refuse, because landfills allow them to make a tidy profit. Having several sources of income makes it easier to start off a life on the outskirts of the city. They call themselves ‘barefoot businessmen,’ and they are more concerned with getting wealth in their hands and paying their medical bills with it.