A Solar Farm at What Cost?

Nina Dar. The Change Troubleshooter

Hello and welcome to a brand new season of The Change Troubleshooter!

This is Season 3 – If Not You, Who?

This season features people who are getting out there trying to make a difference, often against the odds. It’s a season of stories about ordinary, everyday heroes with the guts and determination to fight back against global corporations. It’s the season of people putting their all into maintaining the momentum their farm shop started in lockdown, it’s a season of celebrating people who have not taken no for an answer, who have not given up or given in to forces way stronger than them.

As global climate disaster looms, and maybe feeling powerless, as individuals, to change anything on our own, we hope these heartwarming stories of people’s courage and determination will inspire you to get out of your comfort zone and go and fight the good fight for something close to your heart!

In today’s episode, A Solar Farm at What Cost?- Nina talks to Amanda, a concerned resident of a rural area in the Eastern Algarve in Portugal.

Iberdrola, the world’s 3rd largest renewable energy company, want to build a massive 200+ hectare utility solar farm close to her house on what looks like scrub land, but not everything is as it appears. This apparent nothingness is a barrocal, a rugged, craggy, rocky area. It is also, in this area, an ancient seabed. But more importantly, beneath it is part of an immense aquifer, a body of porous rock saturated with groundwater creating an underground system of pools and lakes that the local area relies on for its water. The land clearing and flattening required for a solar farm here could have disastrous consequences for the local community and create flooding in the areas closer to the coast. Have Iberdrola and the local authorities really done their homework or are they more interested in just ticking another green box?