[Notes & Sources] Comparing all energy sources to each other (from solar farms to fossil fuels) (Update 3)
which energy source is cleaner and more efficient
Preface: The paper I want to write is going to take some time, so hopefully this will give you an idea of what I plan to write about. Below you will find a list of sources that I will use in my upcoming article (looking at the amount the sources down below this will be a long article). Feel free to click on the links below if any of them catch your interest. Be careful not to cherry-pick or misleadingly pick only a part of an article. I will also update this article with more sources and typing out my actual article.
[Notes: the solar farm built locally in Fort Gratiot Township is different and shouldn’t be compared to solar farms built in California? Frustration about taking away local control is also understandable. Solar Farms can be too big for there to be an effective noise canceling solution?]
Given current events going on in St. Clair County, I was originally going to write a story about the construction of solar panels in Fort Gratiot Township and Clyde Township. However, the more I thought about the more I realized that it would be better to write an article about comparing different forms of energy to each other in order to find out the advantages and disadvantages between Renewable, Nuclear and Fossil Fuel energy sources. I will also discuss the solar farm being placed in Fort Gratiot Township and discuss the complexities of how this could be good and/or bad for the people of the township.
Let’s start with the solar farm being built in Fort Gratiot Township and where the public pushback is coming from. The controversy over the construction of the solar panels is not new and can go back all the way to last year in 2023. A special land use permit was being requested in Fort Gratiot Township Farmland of about 900 acers and caused so much crowding for a planning commission meeting that they planned to move it to the fire station before deciding to adjourn the meeting for a later date (1380 A.M. WPHM 2023). There was even a court case in the trial of Portside Solar, LLC v Fort Gratiot Township that was a major part of the pushback against the solar farm in Fort Gratiot Township (“Charter Township of Fort Gratiot Special Board Meeting.” October 14th, 2024.). More specifically, the consent judgment of the lawsuit settlement approved of the construction and maintenance of the solar panels by Portside Solar, LLC according to the site plan onto the lands of the municipalities of Fort Gratiot Township and Clyde Township. The consent judgment also states that if the noise of the invertor exceeds 45 dBA (comparable to the sound of moderate rainfall or a library) can be heard for an hour at a nonparticipating lot, then it is mandated that the noise be brought down to no more than 45 dBA even if it means constructing sound walls and mandates water testing prior to the construction of solar panels followed once for the first six months after construction and then lastly followed by once every two years afterwards. Additionally, after the panels are done being used, they must go outside of St. Clair County to a landfill or recycling center and perimeter fencing will be installed that is at least 7 feet. On top of that, Portside Solar must respond to residents’ complaints within a 10-day period (Fort Gratiot Charter Township: Outline for Portside Solar Settlement Proposal 2024). There was even significant opposition voiced about a month ago at a recent board of trustees meeting in Fort Gratiot Township, Michigan (Meganck 2024).
When we look at how the solar farm is going to be constructed by looking at the Fort Gratiot Township Planning Commission site plan review, it states that Portside Solar LLC (which is part of a larger company called ranger power) wanted to construct a Large Principle-Use Solar Energy System and needed approval from the planning commission to use the land needed for construction. The Large Principle-Use Solar Energy System needed 17 parcels of land in Fort Gratiot and six parcels of land in Clyde Township in which the substation would be in Clyde Township and the solar panels and inverters would largely be in Fort Gratiot Township in the form of photovoltaic (PV) arrays. There would also be a transmission line, underground electrical cables, fencing (to keep out wildlife), landscaping, screening and gravel roads (to access each PV array). The way the construction of the Large Principle-Use Solar Energy will be structured will be the PV arrays surrounded by fencing and the fencing itself will be behind the mandated Screening and Landscaping. There is also a requirement that wetlands are forbidden from being disturbed and the PV Solar Panels will be up to 100 Megawatts. When it comes to the Principle-Use Solar Energy System, its height cannot exceed 16 inches at maximum tilt, the perimeter fencing can’t be more than 6 feet in height, there needs to be a 100 feet distance from any non-participating lot but does not need to adhere to property line setbacks when it comes to common property lines of participating lots with the only two exceptions being to adhere to road right-of-way setbacks and for principal buildings and structures, the sound pressure level cannot exceed 45 dBA (as also stated before in the Outline for the Portside Solar Settlement Proposal), etc. (Fort Gratiot Charter Township. November 8th, 2023.).
One positive aspect that often gets brought up when it comes to solar panels is how beneficial solar panels can be to the local economy. In the case of the solar farm being built in Fort Gratiot Township, the CEO and President of the Shiawassee Economic Development Partnership Justin Horvath advocates for the construction of the solar farm because he sees many economic benefits for the local community such as payments to the local government for leasing their land that is then spent to help the local community and helps farmers by giving them an income stream, the employment of 400 workers (most of which are from the local area) including a couple of long-term employees for site maintenance, gaining knowledge and experience regarding construction skills that will help them with future career opportunities, the involvement of local business vendors which received profit for their involvement and a substantial increase of property tax revenue that will help finance local governments and schools. Mr. Horvath also stated that he had a positive experience working with the ranger power team. There have also been accusations of astroturfing from the fossil fuel industry to oppose solar farm initiatives across the United States and that misinformation regarding solar farms is being spread around the United States such as they poison the ground water, hurt the local wildlife and emit electromagnetic waves (Fort Gratiot Charter Township: Portside Solar Email Correspondence Log 2023).
When it comes to the accusation that solar farms kill birds, there may be some truth to this claim, but it omits the fact that fossil fuel plants kill more birds than solar farms do. More specifically, the 37,800 to 138,600 birds that die each year due to the production of solar energy is small when compared to the 14.5 million birds that die each year as a result of fossil fuel plants (Asenso 2021). The noise from solar panels can be annoying, but the decibel level would not be so high to the point that it would damage hearing or harm a person’s mental health. There are noise codes at both the state and local level that solar panels have to abide by (Bahtiarian 2020). Also, when I called Venice Township regarding the contract they had with solar power they told me that the noise did not exceed what was in the agreement (Meganck 2025). Similar to the agreement made between Fort Gratiot Township and Ranger Power which states that noise cannot exceed 45 decibels, which has been stated before in this article. The maximum amount of noise that a solar farm is allowed without breaking the state or local government’s noise code can vary from place to place. In Massachusetts, decibel levels are not allowed to exceed between 35-40 decibels (Bahtiarian 2020). It is also important to know that how a solar project is designed has a lot to do with how noisy solar panels/solar farms will be such as setting up a noise barrier from 3 to 4 directions (Prevost 2023). The concern over the rise of property values due to solar farms has shown to have a minimal effect (if any at all). The treasurer of Venice Township states that she has had no problem selling homes from right across the solar farm (Meganck 2025). If one were to look at it more broadly from a national standpoint, it would depend on what data you are looking at. One of the many studies in which one of them is conducted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) partnered with the University of Texas at Austin shows that solar farms either have no impact or a positive impact when it comes to affecting nearby home values. Other studies from Marous & Company, The Chisago County (Minnesota) Assessor’s Office, etc. also show similar results to that study (American Clean Power Association January 10th, 2025). Even a study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory only found there to be a negative effect on home value in homes that live within a mile of the solar farm. Homes that were closer than a quarter mile to the solar farm only saw a 2.3% decrease in property value, Homes that were between a quarter to half a mile only saw a 1.5% decrease and Homes that were between a half a mile to a mile only saw a 0.8% decrease. Also, this decrease in property/home value did not seem to exist when it came to Greenfields (meaning undeveloped land open for industrial use), Brownfields (meaning former industrial or commercial sites), Mixed residential/commercial sites and Urban areas (Weise 2023).
In regard to solar farms causing flooding there is little evidence of a causal link that I have heard. I’ve heard of a minor issue affecting one home from someone working under the drain commissioner, but no major instances of flooding that they were aware of were due to solar panels. The newly elected drain commissioner of Shiawassee County (or Venice Township) says he isn’t aware of any flooding because of the solar panels (Meganck 2025).
There has also been a lot of conversation regarding China and how it compares to the United States in terms of its use of fossil fuels and renewable energy sources. According to geography professor Hunckler at St. Clair County Community College, it is true that China uses more coal than any other country in the world to the point that it is more than half of the entire world’s consumption of coal. However, it is also true that China will likely run out of coal in 30-35 years and as coal becomes more scarce overtime the price of coal will skyrocket due to the basic principle of supply and demand economics. When it comes to the United States, only around 20% of US energy production comes from coal and natural gas is much more prevalent at around 40%. While it is better to use natural gas than coal in terms of giving off less carbon emissions, the method of hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) that is widely used to extract natural gas today can pollute the groundwater with chemicals such as benzene, gelling agents, crosslinkers, friction reducers, corrosion inhibitors, scale inhibitors, biocides and even diesel fuel as well as consume a lot of water in the process of which Michigan has plenty of in the great lakes that states who partake in a lot of fracking such as Texas and Oklahoma want to use. Given how scarce clean water is it is understandable why some are concerned about the depletion of clean water in order to support fracking. Also, given the fact that fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource means that once the world runs out of fossil fuels to use it is going to harm both economic and national security for countries around the world (including the United States) (Fort Gratiot Charter Township. “Portside Solar Email Correspondence Log.” November 6th, 2023.).
Going back to China though, what forms of energy China is using, how much of each form of energy they are using and how they are using different forms of energy differently is all a complicated mixture which makes it difficult to give a simple conclusion. As stated before, it is true that China uses more coal than any other country in the world. China itself accounts for more than half of the worlds coal demand totaling 4,939 million tons (Blas 2024) and China is also mining record amounts of coal as well as constructing new generators that rely on fossil fuels (along with long-term deals to purchase natural gas) in order to help with preventing electricity shortages (Bloomberg News 2023). However, it is also true that China is making serious efforts to transition more to renewable energy. For example, China does have a renewable energy target that they are trying to reach by 2030 in which they have wind and solar capacity installed of 1,200 Gigawatts, which is a record-breaking amount of wind and solar power installation. In reality, China is actually ahead of schedule as they have already met their renewable energy target by the end of July 2024 (Ahmed 2024). In fact, China’s wind and solar capacity is likely to be 1,371 Gigawatts by as recent as 2025 which almost doubles the wind and solar capacity it had before which is a record amount of solar installation (Bloomberg News 2023). Comparatively, the amount of renewable energy that China is bringing in would be similar to China bringing five large nuclear power plants to supply its own energy every single week. While having a stable power supply is challenging when it comes to solar and wind, China is using energy storage to help compensate for this by using hydro facilities, batteries and coal-fired power plants (Ahmed 2024). China is embracing green energy to such an extent (especially solar power) that it is projected to have a green energy boom for the next six years as within that time period 60% of all renewable energy capacity worldwide will be installed in China. China’s renewable energy is projected to grow by such a large amount that by 2030 it will have over half of the world’s renewable energy (Ambrose 2024). According to Ember Energy, in 2023 35% of China’s electricity came from clean energy such as hydro, wind and solar power and 65% of China’s electricity came from fossil fuels (Ember Energy: China 2024).
When it comes to Germany, they are reducing their carbon emissions to the point that they are now at a 70 year low by phasing out their use of coal, by 73m Tonnes to be exact. The decline of coal’s share of electricity generation in Germany went from 34 to 26 percent and renewable energy’s share of electricity generation in Germany is at an all-time high at 50% (Ibrahim 2024). Although it is also true that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made it more difficult for Germany to transition to renewable energy as Russia cut off its gas supply in retaliation for the sanctions. Just to underscore how reliant Germany was on Russia for its fossil fuel sources, Germany got more than half of its natural gas supply, almost half of its coal imports and approximately a third of the burning of oil needed to heat homes from Russia in 2021 (Eddy 2022). There is also skepticism as to whether the decline of fossil fuel production and use in Germany is sustainable in the long term as it is shown to be weakening Germany’s economy (Ibrahim 2024). Whether this decline in fossil fuel production would have hurt Germany’s economy without Russia cutting off its gas supply is unknown, although the continued modernization of Renewable energy will help increase its availability and use as an energy source overtime. Given current circumstances, the transition to green energy in Germany has led to issues of reliability has there has not been enough wind and sunlight for solar panels and wind turbines to store for future energy use which has led to an increase in the price of electricity in Germany. These issues of reliability with wind and solar power have led to political issues with the ruling party coalition in Germany led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz which includes the green party. The conservative opposition party called the CSU/CDU being led by Friedrich Merz is attacking the ruling party on these issues of the reliability of renewable energy and is expected to win the upcoming 2025 elections. In order for a country to successfully transition to renewable energy, renewable energy itself needs to have a much higher storage capacity and develop other sources of energy alongside renewables such as gas, hydrogen or nuclear power, according to Georg Zachmann who is an energy and climate specialist at the Bruegel think tank. However, it is also worth noting that if the conservative opposition party the CSU/CDU were to win the upcoming 2025 election that they would be far more interested in switching to nuclear power rather than going back to fossil fuels (Lacour 2024). Solar Panels and Wind Turbines could also improve their own technology by being more effective at gathering the energy from the sun and the wind by being able to grab a larger amount of energy in a shorter amount of time. According to Ember Energy, 46% of Germany’s electricity came from fossil fuels and 54% of Germany’s energy sources came from clean energy in 2023 (Ember Energy: Germany 2024).
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