Solar Farms Have a Superpower Beyond Clean Energy
By Catrin Einhorn, The New York Times.
Excerpt: As solar projects unfurl across the United States, sites like this one in Ramsey, Minn., stand out because they offer a way to fight climate change while also tackling another ecological crisis: a global biodiversity collapse, driven in large part by habitat loss. ...Solar farms could blanket millions of acres in the United States over the coming decades. So developers, operators, biologists and environmentalists are teaming up with an innovative strategy. “We have to address both challenges at the same exact time,” said Rebecca Hernandez, a professor of ecology at the University of California, Davis, whose research focuses on how to do just that. Insects, those small animals that play a mighty role in supporting life on Earth, are facing alarming declines. Solar farms can offer them food and shelter by providing a diverse mix of native plants. Such plants can also decrease erosion, nourish the soil and store planet-warming carbon. They can also attract insects that improve pollination of nearby crops....