Lack of Transparency, Danger, Fuels Concerns About Enid Solar Installation

On Wednesday, May 8th, ROPE Report Live hosted NeAnne Clinton, a property owner from Enid, Oklahoma who is fighting a 10,000 acre solar farm installation just south of town between the municipal airport and Vance Airforce Base.

Over the course of an hour and a half, NeAnne walked us through some major concerns about this solar farm, including a lack of transparency by the County Commissioners, the danger of lithium ion battery fires and the destruction of private farm land. (Please see their website GARFIELD COUNTY CONSERVATION COALITION for more information)

Though the ‘climate change club’ wants to shriek like Chicken Little about the sky falling, their ‘fixes’ literally make no sense. In fact, between wind and solar, there is no way to believe that either method of energy is producing less waste and better living conditions than natural gas or oil.

Let’s break it down.

• China makes nearly all solar panels creating supply chain and autonomy issues for the US
• It costs about $20-$30 to recycle one panel, when sending it to the landfill costs between $1 and $2
• There are mainly made of glass and silver, the former which has very little recycling value at present
• No plans have been made to dispose of the waste which is expected to generate 315 metric tons by 2030
  • All stats from The Dark Side of Solar Power, Harvard Business Review 2021
• Solar panels only last about 25 to 30 years
• Recycling at present is inefficient, expensive and highly regulated making it difficult to achieve
• Though solar panel recycling could be worth a great deal in the future, the industry is not growing to keep pace with the number of solar panels being installed
• The lithium batteries needed to store the energy solar panels produce
  • are full of toxic materials
  • they are mined in developing countries – creating human rights issues and a geopolitical instability in battery components
  • creating battery-grade lithium uses massive amounts of energy, that ironically we’re trying to conserve by using solar energy
  • lithium batteries often end up in landfills
  • recycling lithium batteries is difficult and expensive
• Lithium ion batteries cannot be extinguished if they catch fire and use inordinate amounts of water to control, or firefighters foam which contains cancer-causing PFA’s that easily pollute water sources like aquifers

In the meantime, solar energy corporations like the one attempting to set up shop in Enid – NextEra – are not being transparent with landowners or the City of Enid about the benefits to citizens.

Watch this short clip for more information:

List of citations used in the clip:

https://www.stopskeletoncreeksolar.org/
https://www.nexteraenergy.com/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lithium-ion-battery-blamed-yet-another-fast-moving-fire-nyc-officials-rcna73566
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/solar-farm-battery-fire-upstate-new-york-possible-toxic-smoke-shelter-in-place-lyme-jefferson-county/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/firefighting-foam-polluted-water-with-pfas-decades-later-pentagon-changes-course/ar-AA1o3m1C

See the full video on our YouTube channel and our Rumble channel.