Solar Road Panels Rock Hard

I just came across a great article about a proposal to replace paved surfaces with rugged, specially built solar panels. It's an innovative idea for creating an abundance of clean energy, reducing green house emmisions, and even making roads safer. The solar surfaces would be able to de-ice themselves, and could detect wildlife or other obstacles on the road surface and cue drivers to slow down. I can think of a few other ways these solar pathways would benefit people, wildlife, and the environment that are worth pointing out.

• Less warming. An abundance of dark pavement makes cities into heat islands. Pavement absorbs, then emits heat all day, making concrete jungles like Phoenix and Los Angeles even hotter. If we had less paved roads in cities, they would be cooler. Then we wouldn't use as much energy on air conditioning, we would release less green house gases, and contribute less to global warming. It' a beautiful feedback loop involving changes on both local and global scales.

• Less artificial lighting. LED transmitters in the solar roadways would light up lines in the roads, making street lights unnecessary. This equals darker skies, less light pollution, and is better for species that are affected by artificial lighting, like baby sea turtles. Lights can be deadly to hatchling turtles, who come out of the nest at night and orient themselves toward the brightest area. On natural beaches this light comes from the night sky reflecting off the ocean. However, where beach areas are highly populated and overlit, the hatchlings become disoriented and crawl away from the ocean and toward the lights, often dyingfrom exhaustion, dehydration, being eaten by predators, or being run over by cars.

• Using existing roadways as solar receptacles would mean that we wouldn't need to clear, fragment, or build access roads in pristine wildlife habitat to make way for solar panel farms, so it's a big win for conservation of wildlands.

All in all, I think it's a pretty rockin idea.