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In California’s Central Valley, the Plan to Build More Solar Faces a Familiar Constraint: The Need for More Power Lines
The state could embrace “policy synergy” to deploy solar in areas transitioning out of agriculture, but the transmission lines must come first.
By Emma Foehringer Merchant
California’s San Joaquin Valley, a strip of land between the Diablo Range and the Sierra Nevada, accounts for a significant portion of the state’s crop production and agricultural revenues. But with the state facing uncertain and uneven water supply due to climate change, some local governments and clean energy advocates hope solar energy installations could provide economic reliability where agriculture falters due to possible water shortages.