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

Pointing out the stark, bleeding obvious...

[Dan1701]

A couple of hours of no power input from solar power is not, and never has been a problem for the European power grid. This sort of thing happens extremely regularly, every night. We're used to it, and can cope. Thanks for worrying about us, though; it really was extremely kind of you.

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

[MickyTheIdiot]

This remind me of "sun sets, wind dies" billboards that get placed in coal mining towns. Only affective if you choose not believe in things like batteries and/or you have pushed the argument to full false dilemma status.

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...

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

[Okian Warrior]

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.

How about we build nitrogen fixation factories near the baseload generation, keep the baseload on all the time, and make fertilizer during the times when the energy is otherwise not needed? Nitrogen fixation can be quickly started up and shut down without damage to the system, and requires an enormous amount of worldwide energy.

How about we build a smart grid, which incorporates electric vehicles on home charging systems? Charge the car during the day, then give back some of the stored energy at night when the car's in the garage.

How about we take recycled batteries from aging electric vehicles - batteries that can hold 80% of their original charge, but which are no longer good enough for electric vehicle operation - and stack them in warehouses to store and release energy as needed? Do batteries lose capacity at an exponential rate? If so, those 80% batteries should last a long time.

How about we mount the solar panels with a gap above the rooftops, so that the panels keep sunlight off of the roof, reducing [somewhat] the *need* for energy to be spent on air conditioning?

How about we look for solutions rather than assume that everything will be exactly like it is now, except with problems that cannot be solved?

Part of their roof?

[ArcadeMan]

It better be a minimum percentage of the roof otherwise the law will be useless.

Re:Part of their roof?

[Anonymous Coward]

Square acres? So your factory is 4-dimensional?

Re:premiÃre publication

[ArcadeMan]

Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet

Re:Why not roads, too? And swimming pools?

[DrunkenTerror]

To be fair, they do at least require the pitch to be covered with plants.

Summer cooling?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Here's something I've been curious about. I would expect that if there's a between the solar panels and the roof, this would lead the attic to stay a lot cooler in the summer. Because the sun would be mostly heating up the panels and not the roof. Anyone know if that can significantly reduce the temperature of a home's living spaces?

Re:Summer cooling?

[Nemyst]

The EPA has a page on the very subject, claiming that green roofs not only help with cooling, but also heating, since they act as insulators. They also reduce pollutants in the air and combat the heat island effect present in many large cities. I am not aware of many negatives for them, aside from the maintenance required for the more elaborate ones.

Re:Summer cooling?

[St.Creed]

Actually there's quite a lot of experience with this type of roof nowadays.

Standard roofs locally are covered with bitumen waterproof covering. THis is affected mostly by UV light, which is countered by layering it over with earth and having vegetation on top of it. This can double the lifespan of the waterproof covering.

The weight of a light covering with Sedum (very small, fatty ground-covering foliage that is very robust) will weigh between 50 and 60 kilograms per square meter. If your roof can't hold that, it will have serious trouble with a big snowlayer. Roofs are mandated to hold at least 100 kg/m^2 over 10m^2, and roofs meant to be used as terrace or walked upon for inspection have to be able to hold 250 kg/m^2.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

News from TOMORROW!

[ArcadeMan]

2017-08-12 - A man fell to his death today while mowing the lawn on the roof of Les Olympiades. Witnesses claim to have heard him shout "Putain d'écureuils de bordel de merde!" while he fell down.

A New Market Opens

[SuperKendall]

I'm going to take broken / very old solar panels from all over, and sell them to businesses in France.

After all, the law didn't state the solar panels had to be hooked up to anything...

You probably don't want to know about my new plan to get ride of discarded trees and other vegetation.

Re:A New Market Opens

[DoofusOfDeath]

You probably don't want to know about my new plan to get ride of discarded trees and other vegetation.

Have them run for President as the best bush candidate?

Re:Stupid.

[OhPlz]

Did you miss the words "commercial zone"?

Re:Decrees everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure are a lot of decrees coming from our masters who know what's best for us. Solar panels from the French. Regulated bullets, fracking, coal, networking, and healthcare policies here in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

You're right. Companies should be able to polute the rivers, pump toxins in the soil, everyone should have 50 cal machine gun nests with armor piercing bullets, coal plants should spew as much sulphur as they want, and we should let people die in the street if they can't pay for healthcare.

Hyperbole is fun!

I'll explain it to you, and I'll use small words: We all have to live together on the same planet. So people (and companies) are not allowed to do things to hurt other people. We can disagree about where to draw the line, but some of the examples you gave were stupid.

Freedom Roofs

[Snufu]

Because the bible tells us the French are a bunch of devil worshiping socialists, our only recourse is mandated "Freedom Roofs", each with eternal flames fed by coal, used electronics, hippies, and any stray French we catch at the borders.

Better dead than green.