Term Test 1 Listening drill

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This is a satellite image of the Mojave Desert in the U .S.

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It's a fragile desert ecosystem,

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dotted with wildflower fields and Joshua trees,

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which are iconic in this region.

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But over the past several years,

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the landscape has started to change.

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If you take a closer look in certain areas,

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you start to see more and more of these patches of blue.

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They're solar farms.

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And in this part of the US,

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many environmental activists and local residents are not happy

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about them.

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Joshua trees are torn down to make way for solar projects.

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Causing quite an uproar.

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Just piles and piles of Joshua trees.

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It isn't just the trees.

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Solar farms in rural areas can take up valuable agricultural land and

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disrupt diverse ecosystems.

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But transitioning to more solar power and a more sustainable future

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for the US requires a lot of land.

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So what if we could find some of that land inside our

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cities?

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This

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video is presented by Delta Airlines.

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In 2021,

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President Biden announced ambitious plans for the U .S.

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to achieve net -zero greenhouse gas emissions economy -wide by no

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later than 2050.

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Solar is a critical part of the plan.

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And over the past several years,

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as the U .S.

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has ramped up solar power generation,

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the vast majority of solar arrays have been built in rural areas.

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According to one study,

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over half of utility -scale solar facilities were placed in deserts,

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another third in croplands,

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10 % in grasslands and forests,

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and just 2 .5 % in urban areas.

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That makes sense.

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Putting solar on undeveloped open spaces is often the cheapest and fastest

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way to do it.

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But there are some major problems with this path.

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Large -scale installations often mean bulldozing massive amounts

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of land, altering plant and animal growth,

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and migration patterns.

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Or locals don't want a solar farm to ruin natural views.

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Or they want to preserve farmland.

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When you start to go bigger and bigger,

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then it starts to become less comfortable for people.

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That's Joshua Pierce.

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He's been a photovoltaics researcher for two decades and is a professor

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at the University of Western Ontario.

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And so we've seen...

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progressively more and more resistance in the middle of the U .S.

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to large -scale solar development.

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That resistance has sometimes been funded by fossil fuel companies.

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But people also have legitimate concerns.

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And across the country,

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from Massachusetts to Ohio to California,

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solar expansion has been stalled by protests.

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One option that we're starting to see more of is agrovoltaics.

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It's a way to build solar arrays that allow for agricultural use between

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the panels to preserve some farmland for crops,

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grazing, or native species.

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But because the need for energy is mostly outside of rural areas,

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Any kind of rural solar still means building long -distance transmission lines

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that can be expensive and an eyesore.

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One thing that could help address some of these issues would be a kind of large,

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open,

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unused space closer to cities.

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Enter parking lots.

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The U .S.

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has a lot of them.

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Thanks to decades of designing cities around cars,

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parking lots cover over 5 % of developed land.

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These spaces could play one part in helping to fix solar's land problem

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if we covered the lots in canopies of solar panels.

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There is an awful lot of parking lot space in the United States that we can

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take advantage of that's already essentially unused.

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It's wasted space except for parking underneath it,

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and it's not even used most of the time.

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It's an idea that other parts of the world,

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like France,

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are embracing.

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A 2023 policy in France will require that outdoor car parks

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with more than 80 spaces cover at least half the surface area with

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solar canopies.

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And officials estimate it could add 10 nuclear power plants worth

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of solar panels.

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Importantly,

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policy like this utilizes space that's already cleared land with

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little biodiversity,

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which is also close to consumers.

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And parking lot solar canopies could also provide shade to cars in hot

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weather and cover from snow.

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So why don't we see more parking lot canopies in the U .S.

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too? Like canopies that could cover Disney World parking lots

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instead of the solar farms they built on nearby land that used to be

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orchards and forests.

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Or covering some of L .A.'s many parking lots instead

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of overbuilding in the desert.

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Well, the biggest obstacle to putting solar on parking lots is

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cost.

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The cost of putting in a solar canopy is going to

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be 50 % to even 100 % more than a conventional solar farm.

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The thing that makes canopies more expensive than a conventional solar farm is

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they're higher up off the ground.

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And so you need more structural material and you also need more weight at the bottom

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holding them from blowing away.

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And so why would a company want to invest even more money to

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put in a canopy?

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There actually is an answer to that question.

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In 2017,

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Pierce co -authored a study looking into the economic potential of

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parking lot canopies and used Walmart super centers as a case

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study.

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The study found that in places with high solar flux or

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more solar radiation in the area,

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solar canopies could be incredibly profitable,

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like here in Phoenix,

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Arizona.

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But they also found that even in areas in the U .S.

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considered to have less solar flux,

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like here in Michigan,

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selling solar back to the grid at going rates could still be

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profitable enough to make solar canopies worth it in the long run.

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It really goes down to how much are you paying for electricity

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and how much solar flux do you have.

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And most of the U .S.,

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barring northern Alaska,

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actually has fairly good solar fluxes.

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I grew up in western Pennsylvania,

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which has some of the worst,

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and systems are still economic there.

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In another 2021 study,

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Pierce and his team found the total capacity across all U .S.

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Walmart supercenters would be 11 .1 gigawatts of solar

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power.

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That's around the high estimate of what the French parking lot program expects to

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make. With that power,

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Walmart could power about 100 electric vehicle charging stations

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at each Walmart location.

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Or if they combine the canobies with rooftop solar,

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there would likely be more than enough to power the stores.

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It would also create the opportunity to sell power back to utility companies on

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the main grid.

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Or stores could be the anchor for a local microgrid in the community,

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offering power to homes in the case of outages.

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This isn't a one -size -fits -all solution,

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but in good locations where companies can afford the upfront cost

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of installation,

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Pierce's research shows canopies could be a worthwhile investment.

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It's guaranteed under warranty to generally work for 25 years.

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If it's an investment,

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you're investing in a capital asset and it's providing you a return over its lifetime.

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You should treat it the same way you would any other investment.

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Only this one is actually good for the planet at the same time.

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In some parts of the U .S.,

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institutions like airports and universities are already trying

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solar parking lots.

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Walmart and Target are just beginning to try them out in certain stores.

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And policy is slowly catching up,

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too, to make these kinds of solar projects easier.

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Like Maryland offering grants for solar canopies and a

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New York City zoning proposal that would allow for solar on more than 8 ,500

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acres of parking lots.

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Parking lots can't fix solar's land scarcity problem on their own.

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The amount of solar production we need will likely require a combination of

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efforts, including in rural areas.

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Utility scale arrays,

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canopies where we can put them,

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arrays on rooftops,

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and in other places like along highways,

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over landfills,

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or on degraded lands.

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But solar canopies are part of a large toolbox that could

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put a huge dent in our reliance on fossil fuels.

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and point to a future where more cities are finding ways to

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give new life to some of America's most overlooked spaces.

Term Test 1 Listening drill

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