Both species are difficult to find in Rhode Island. Wood turtles are among the rarest in the state, and little is known about where they can be found and what strategies may boost their populations. The same could be said about solar carports.

Wood turtles, which have been proposed for inclusion on the federal endangered species list, were once plentiful from Virginia to southern Canada and west to Minnesota. Sporting orange patches on their neck and legs, wood turtles spend time in slow-moving rivers and streams during the summer, and can be found in forests, croplands, pastures, and meadows.

In Rhode Island, as well as elsewhere, these natural areas are being replaced by asphalt and concrete — the perfect habitat for solar carports.

While the 6-to-9-inch-long and 2-to-3-pound turtles are classified as threatened in Rhode Island, solar carports could be as common as Japanese knotweed — if Statehouse leadership was actually invested in building a local energy system that protected the state’s environment and ratepayers.

The intertwined problems at hand — the seething climate crisis, the relentless destruction of the natural world, and rising utility rates — require more than burying solar-siting guidelines, PowerPoint presentations, and other documents on an obscure webpage, or routinely sinking legislation that address these issues because monied interests disapprove.

In the meantime, as the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide rises, trees fall, and energy bills swell, the state watches wood turtle habitat be pulverized to build corporate office parks — CVS, Fidelity, and Citizens Bank have all moved their workforces from already-developed areas into now-developed ones — and, absurdly, ground-mounted solar installations.

Citizens Bank’s corporate compound opened in the woods of Johnston six years ago. The monstrosity has some 2,400 parking spots, a main building, a cafe/amenity building, and two office buildings.

What it doesn’t have are any solar carports or rooftop solar panels.

In summer 2016, when ground was broken on the 20th-century idea, a press release from the state’s largest bank touted the environmental benefits of clear-cutting 50 acres of woodland within the Woonasquatucket River watershed to pour concrete.

“The property is being designed to preserve more than 60 acres of trees and wetlands to pay homage to the natural environment of the area,” according to the ridiculous document. “As part of the project, Citizens has remediated the decades old landfill that was on the property and plans to integrate wildlife paths for habitat circulation.”

The illegal dump took up 4 acres of the 110-acre site. But the last six words of the PR-spun fantasy — “integrate wildlife paths for habitat circulation” — perfectly encapsulate Rhode Island’s land-use policy, because they are utterly meaningless, just like all the ignored studies commissioned and laws passed to protect the state’s natural world.

Wood turtles, and much of Rhode Island’s other wildlife, are being forced out by the continued loss of green space and growing forest fragmentation — from the construction of unaffordable housing to the widening of highways to the irresponsible siting of renewable energy.

The state then doesn’t even have the forethought, or decency, to at least use all this pavement and other impervious surface in a more productive way. Rooftop solar should be mandatory for all new development, unless a legitimate reason can be provided. Highway medians should be used to host solar arrays, or at least be allowed to grow into meadows.

As a native Rhode Island species, wood turtles are well adapted to New England’s climate, even if it is changing. Solar carports could be.

Responsible energy policy in the 21st century takes real leadership and vision — two traits that are rare in Rhode Island politics, where recycling tired ideas dominates.

There were four solar carports in the state that the Office of Energy Resources (OER) was aware of in 2020, according to a Feb. 24 story published that year by The Providence Journal.

That short list included a 55.8-kilowatt system at the building in Warwick shared by the Division of Public Utilities and Carriers and the Public Utilities Commission, and a 250-kilowatt system at an apartment complex in South Kingstown.

Last week, I emailed Robert Beadle, OER’s chief public affairs officer, to ask if the agency keeps a list of solar carports in Rhode Island and how much energy they generate.

He provided a list of 12 solar carports, from a 240.2-kilowatt project at the Narragansett Bay Commission (NBC) to a 34.6-kW proposal at the Greenville Baptist Church, supported by Rhode Island Commerce’s Renewable Energy Fund. He noted most of them aren’t yet built and are still in the project pipeline. For instance, the NBC project doesn’t even have a developer.

While Beadle noted “this is not a comprehensive list of carports in the state,” he did mention some others OER is aware of, including ones at the University of Rhode Island, the Newport Wastewater Treatment Facility, and the Quonset Development Corporation.

The number of Rhode Island solar carports is stunningly low, despite a plethora of habitat here that would allow the species to thrive. The person behind the solar carport at Quonset headquarters is equally frustrated by the state’s willingness to unnecessarily sacrifice the natural world to site solar energy.

“Using farmland is the dumbest thing we can do. What is dumber than that?” Donald Richardson recently asked me. I said clear-cutting forests to make room for ground-mounted solar installations also ranks high on the Rhode Island list of dumb. He agreed, but returned to the misuse of agricultural lands.

“Developers of cheap ground-mounted solar arrays like to show pictures of goats hanging around these projects,” he said. “It’s crazy. They last 20 to 25 years and then you throw it in the trash.”

Richardson graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1973. He has worked as an architect since, in Europe and Cambridge, Mass., before opening his Providence-based firm in 1992.

The four-bay, eight-parking-spot solar carport he and his son, Nicholas, designed for Quonset will last 50 to 75 years, according to Richardson. The installation, which will become obsolete sometime between 2063 and 2088, was built with fiberglass and other composite materials, with limited concrete and steel, to give it a “low-energy tail,” he said. It captures about 45% of rainwater runoff, and was built to withstand 120 mph winds.

The 2013 project was funded by Rhode Island Commerce, and Richardson has patented the design. The 8-kW installation is the only solar carport he has designed.

Last month, the University of Rhode Island was celebrated by OER as a Lead by Example award winner, for its recently built solar carport. A press release touting the award noted the “University was recently recognized for its unique carport.”

If the state took addressing the climate crisis and protecting the environment seriously, solar carports would be considered as remarkable as telephone poles. But in Rhode Island an energy project that doesn’t trample the natural world is considered unique.

A report commissioned by state officials four years ago found Rhode Island could produce a greater amount of electricity than it consumes by installing solar arrays on more roofs, landfills, gravel pits, and parking lots.

Already-developed sites across the state can host between 3,390 megawatts and 7,340 megawatts of renewable power, or about 13-30 times the amount currently installed in the state, according to the 2020 analysis. This translates into 5,560 gigawatt-hours to 12,600 gigawatt-hours of potential electricity production. Rhode Island’s annual wholesale electric load is 7,826 gigawatt-hours.

While the 83-page report excluded farmland, residential green spaces, and state and municipal land from Rhode Island’s inventory of solar potential, the first two are where much of the state’s solar projects are still being sited.

Nothing substantially changes, and purported state leaders just shrug.

They’ll provide tax breaks to developers who want to build luxury accommodations and they’ll make tax stabilization deals with corporations looking to resettle in the woods, but they can’t find a way to get private property owners to leave their land forested and can’t do enough to help farmers grow food instead of energy.

That’s what happens when myopic lawmakers read from a 1970s playbook.

The Solar Neighborhoods Act of 2023 would have mandated the inclusion of solar power in all newly built single-family dwellings, multifamily dwellings, large commercial buildings, and parking lots exceeding 16,000 square feet. The bill was held for further study. There’s no room in the early 20th-century Rhode Island Statehouse for new ideas.

In February, a House commission that had been studying the idea of installing solar panels in highway medians recommended that the state take advantage of this low-value space to generate renewable energy. A few years from now, solar medians will remain extinct in Rhode Island.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.