The push for solar energy is carving a path of destruction through the Thar Desert in India’s Rajasthan, where native species maintain a delicate balance of life now being sacrificed to an absurd and futile climate agenda.
This is an act of ecological vandalism that pretends moral superiority while destroying the natural world it supposedly reveres. If nature is the god of the climate obsessed, then their version of saving the planet is blasphemy.
Situated in the northwest of the subcontinent, Rajasthan is India’s largest state, covering more than 10% of the country’s land area. It hosts a habitat that has evolved over millennia to support a unique web of life and is considered a national treasure.
Yet, the government allows its despoilment by solar installations at a staggering scale. The solar blight already afflicts more than 200 square miles. More than 2.6 million trees have been cleared across four districts to make way for the sprawl. To meet India’s distant “green” energy targets, an additional 14,000 square miles of habitat – nearly the size of Switzerland – could be cleared.
The consequences have been devastating. Ponds that once attracted migrating pelicans are now covered with solar panels. Eyewitness accounts report that pelicans often are injured when mistaking the gleaming panels for a body of water at night. Other birds affected include the great Indian bustard, sand grouse, pintail, wigeon, pochard, teal, swan, imperial sand grouse, rain quail, florican, robin, starling and more.
Wildlife expert Mridul Vaibhav says, “Numerous species such as wild pigs, langurs, black deer, desert cats, desert foxes, Indian gazelle, and the great Indian deer are struggling to survive.”
Activists say authorities are handing over ecologically sensitive zones – catchment areas, foothills and surrounding landscapes – to developers in a reckless rush to install solar infrastructure. Bulldozers and other heavy machinery flatten terrain, damage riverbeds and reshape entire watersheds without a second thought.
To clean and cool solar panels, operators use about 10.5 million gallons of water every week — just in four districts. That’s enough to meet the weekly drinking needs of 300,000 people. In a place where water scarcity has at times threatened survival, this redirection of water to a non-agricultural, non-residential activity is both absurd and unethical.
There’s another human cost to this so-called energy transition. Farmers in places like Nursar village were sold the dream of solar prosperity. They gave up their land — 90% of it in some cases — to solar companies promising easy money.
One farm named Ganpat found himself with his solar payout exhausted within five years and the fields his cattle once grazed taken over by solar panels. Fodder must be purchased, and family members without jobs have migrated to cities in search of work.
These people are not climate warriors but the collateral damage of virtue-signaling elites and grifters profiting from government subsidies.
Although solar demands much from the ecosystems and people, its offers little in return because solar panels have extremely low energy density compared to coal, natural gas or nuclear fuel.
To match the output of a nuclear plant a solar facility needs to have more than triple the installed capacity. Why? Because solar plants produce electricity less than a quarter of the time of a nuclear plant. Clouds, sunset, dust storms and snowfall shut down the panels, while a nuclear plant runs almost continuously.
Further, the land needed for a solar facility can range from 45 to 75 square miles. For perspective, the entire island of Manhattan is just 34 square miles. A nuclear site needs less than two square miles. The comparison isn’t even close. Yet green bureaucrats want solar to dominate India’s grid as a response to a fabricated climate emergency.
Is this progress? Is it truly “green” to destroy a desert ecosystem for no benefit? Is it just to impoverish farmers to produce relatively paltry amounts of electricity?
You don’t need to oppose solar altogether to ask these questions. But you do need honesty, courage and common sense, which are in short supply among the environmental elite.
This commentary was first published at RealClear Markets August 13.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
