While fossil fuel firms in the U.S. are carefully wrecking
huge area of the country’s natural heritage, a new energy source has been
quietly rising from an rare source: parking lots. More parking lots are being transformed into
solar energy field that create clean, renewable power while also generating
more green jobs in solar cell sales, installation and construction.
One nearly new player in the U.S. solar parking lot field is
EEPro, an branch of the German company EEPro GmbH, which initiated operations
in North Carolina last year.Its main commodity consists of photovoltaic units
mounted on steel frames, which conform neatly with support for renewable energy
by the Unified Steelworkers and other labor groups that see a rich growth of
new green jobs in the develop green economy.
The Gains of Solar Parking Lots
The main idea behind a solar parking lot is simply to
organise solar panels into a carport, which is esentially an open-sided shed
with a roof. Solar carports can be
suitable to fit a single car at a mansion, or scaled up for commercial and
institutional goals. The main benefit, of course, is to make renewable energy
that can be used to lower service costs on site,for example at a mall or office
buildings. Depending on the scale, the
installation could also earn excess energy in the form of electricity for sale.
A solar carport can also help to lower the “heat island”effect of parking lots
and add to a cooler community,and by giving protection from the elements it can
help boost vehicle lifespan.
Solar Energy Parking Lots and the U.S. Military
Foreign companies like EEPro GmbH may be seeing effeciency
for growth in the U.S. market at least slightly because of the enthusiastic
leap which with the U.S. military has accepted alternative energy, which will
quicken the transformation of alternative energy from a fringe source linked
with the “fringe elements” of association
into a mainstream, all-American power source. The military has also begun to organize a
heavy dose of public outreach and learning into its new alternative energy
projects, one example being a giant solar installation at a New Jersey National
Guard facility built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, entire with its own
public solar energy information website.
Solar Parking Lots and Brownfields
The solar parking lot phenomenon also conform with a major
ramping up of the EPA’s efforts to recover brownfields for alternative energy
and green jobs. Like parking lots,
brownfields are broad patches of land (former industrial sites with varying
degrees of contamination) that have previously been paved over or otherwise
altered by human action, so it makes sense to put them to work at generating
clean energy. It’s a secured, less
riskier alternative to harvesting fuel from productive land or marine
ecosystems that could be used for other plans such as food recreation,supply,
and nature conservation.
(source by Cleantechnica.com)