France Decrees New Rooftops Must Be Covered In Plants Or Solar Panels

An anonymous reader writes: A law approved in France Thursday now requires all new rooftops in commercial zones to be covered in plants or solar panels. "Green roofs have an isolating effect, helping reduce the amount of energy needed to heat a building in winter and cool it in summer. They also retain rainwater, thus helping reduce problems with runoff, while favoring biodiversity and giving birds a place to nest in the urban jungle, ecologists say." The law was actually watered down from its original version — businesses only have to cover part of their roof. In other solar power news, reader SpzToid notes that despite earlier worries, the European power grid handled the solar eclipse just fine

Comments

Re:Stupid.

[OhPlz]

Did you miss the words "commercial zone"?

Re:Pointing out the stark, bleeding obvious...

[rsborg]

So the plan is to install enough batteries to power the world all night long, and then for a week or two when the weather is bad?

Or is it to put solar all over the Earth and have a massive world wide power grid to move power to where it is needed?

I suppose either is technically possible, I just don't think either is likely to happen.

Read up on baseload power plants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

Essentially solar energy activists aren't out to throw away all coal or fossil fuel plants - just to increase the diversity of power (with a gradual push towards renewables as battery technology and solar extraction improve). Some solar proponents also even support properly implemented nuclear (me!) - anything to get us off the coal crack-pipe.

btw, an industrial scale solar molten salt facility does have a built-in battery - take a look here - its not like this is unfamiliar territory - it's been implemented. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...