Learned something new this week. In Germany there is a ”priority area” for solar power along the Autobahn! Up to 500 meters along both sides of any Autobahn you can build solar power plants easier (if within 200 meters you do not even need a building permit for it!).
The point is to use area that is hard to use otherwise, and also gives noise reduction to the surrounding area. And frees up quite a lot of land! In total a bit of 13.000 km of Autobahn in Germany, and this gives about lot of area – if used to a maximum extent it would give 72 gigawatt of power capacity (Germany currently has a total production capacity of 263 GW, so this would cover around a quarter of it’s need)
And it also gives those land owners along the Autobahn more income opportunities. Usual price for farmland next to Autobahn is reportedly €200-€1000 per hectare, for solar plant developers are willing to pay €2000 – €5000 per hectare.
Do you know about other countries that have something like this? And I wonder if it could be used for wind power as well – being close to a highway would make transporting big wind turbines a lot easier, and being around a noisy highway would not bother wind power plants..