Panels and “heat islands”, bees towards hell

They don’t know what else to invent. The latest frontier of ” green washing “, marketing that uses “green” to cleanse its conscience of speculation and business, anything but environmental, is that of bees. The move is punctuated with ever greater insistence thanks to a media hammering by a “family” format mill. The implication impressed in the fairy-tale images produced by the most extreme green monetization is eloquent: solar panels are the natural habitat for bees too.

Hands up

In other words: let’s cover our backs, let’s use the “let’s save the world thanks to bees” advert to guarantee ourselves a media pass for hundreds of hectares of environmental and landscape devastation, deluding the most profane that the “advert bees” can fly undisturbed among wildflowers and overheated panels. The most daring photovoltaic masters, now that the castle of green business on the head of Sardinia is crumbling project after project, are even trying the beekeeping card: an ideal illusion, imaginatively salvific, for those who would like to place “pro-honey” hives among silicon panels and olive trees, sowing a bit of “wildflower” grass here and there, as if Alice’s town were Pabillonis.

Selling “bees”

A communication strategy that has even made inroads into the National Commission of the Pnrr, the same one that last week gave the green light, against the heavy opinions of the Superintendency and the Region, to a project that entrusts beekeeping with the function of “guarantor” for a mega project of 86,160 photovoltaic modules. Panels in pure crystalline silicon, rigorously Chinese, all directly produced by one of the primary companies in the Chinese province of Xinjiang , a production area subject to the application of the ” U igur law” wanted by the United States against the exploitation of the poorest populations in the Far East.

“Solar” exploitation

It matters little if the exploitation of men and women, on the other side of the world, in the most unknown China, is at the base of the production of those solar “grills” that will cover land and vegetation on the island of Sardinia: the image of bees, “sold” with four lines in a project of almost 40 million euros of agrivoltaic, is the most eloquent symbol of the new solar marketing . No one, however, has asked the question that the entire scientific community, the free one and not on the payroll of “solar-dollar” associations, is trying to examine in the light of increasingly frequent phenomena of areal “overheating” where the panels become an immense desert of silicon.

Studies blocked

The same scientists who study the phenomenon write it: no one is financing adequate studies to understand the seriousness of the repercussions on the territorial microclimate, both on a human, plant and animal level. In Sardinia, on this issue, there is a territory that more than others has broken the Italian record for land consumption, that of Uta, on the slopes of Monte Arcosu.

Macchiareddu Deception

Clumsily, the most cunning, define that area as an “industrial zone”, as if to justify the environmental devastation in progress. In reality, those who know that territory, know well that “Macchiareddu” has nothing to do with that area where they are clearing hundreds of hectares of fertile fields to place photovoltaic panels as if there were no tomorrow.

Slopes of the Oasis

We are in an evident agricultural area, in an area of great landscape value, considering that on that side lie the slopes of the great “Oasi del Cervo”.

The Uta Massacre

This is where the first huge massacre of bees took place, linked to what scientists call the “heat island”, or the area where temperatures rise following the management of the energy exchange between the sun and those panels, dramatically altering the natural environment.

Shocking images

The images we publish do not need any comments: the Uta countryside, a thriving beekeeping company for decades, until those trucks loaded with Chinese panels arrived, changing the climate and landscape, flora and fauna of that area. The hives in an instant, without warning, were overwhelmed by a real tsunami of heat, amplified beyond measure, like never before in that area. A scorching “bubble” that transformed those hives into a coffin for millions of bees, wrapped in honey and wax, melting in a frame all the laborious inlay of the worker bees. This, however, cannot be said: for the marketing of renewables, only “rose-colored” truths are allowed, told by conscience-washing commercials.

Hidden truth

In reality, however, even if under the table, without ever having been disclosed, internal documents have been drawn up by the Environmental Assessment Service of the Sardinian Region where the statements are more than an accusation. On the overheating in the areas where these silicon expanses are “placed”, the Region writes: ” the Integrated Environmental Assessment Service has concluded the investigation by highlighting that it is not possible to exclude negative and significant environmental impacts for the intervention in question, attributable, in particular, to the following critical issues: microclimate component, necessary to estimate the possible impacts both at the site level and on the surrounding areas, taking into account what has been highlighted in recent literature that attributes, to particularly large photovoltaic systems, the ability to create a “Heat Island” effect. In short, not only do they devastate the landscape, transforming it from an identity to an industrial one, but they even alter its climate with all the consequences.

Pasture for solar bees

Yet there are those, including the recently approved projects, who go so far as to say: « the second agricultural component inserted is a beekeeping operation that will make use of a permanent flower meadow placed under the panels in the area. The hives will be placed in safe areas within the mitigation chosen in order to allow the ‘grazing’ of pollinating insects throughout the area ». The US studies, University of Arizona, tell another story: « We found that the temperatures above a photovoltaic system were regularly 3-4 degrees warmer than in natural areas ». In Sardinia, however, the “bee-silicon” spot is the new frontier, that of the foreign invasion.

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