New South Korean national law will turn large parking lots into solar farms

Questionable emissions and energy claims

• Commenters dissect the cited Arizona 657 kW carport: 1.23 GWh/year is plausible, but the claim that it offsets “185,000 vehicles’ worth” of emissions is widely viewed as nonsensical.
• Back-of-envelope calculations show the solar output avoids only a few hundred tons of CO₂/year, versus hundreds of thousands of tons for 185k cars.
• Some speculate the figure might be miscommunicated (e.g., EV charging, or some indirect effect like reduced AC use from shaded cars), but consensus is that the article’s number is wrong or misleading.

Parking-lot solar: costs, heat, and usability

• Strong support for using parking lots: they’re ugly heat islands anyway, shading benefits cars and pedestrians, and generation is co-located with demand (AC, shops, malls).
• Main technical downside: canopies are structurally and electrically more expensive than ground mounts (wind/seismic loads, vehicle impact, public safety, wiring).
• Some argue rooftops and non-food/agrofuels farmland should be saturated first; others counter that parking-lot shading is a direct amenity and avoids sacrificing valuable farmland.
• Concerns raised about pedestrian safety, sightlines, and hail/ice loads; others note multi-story garages already solve similar issues and hail-resistant panel designs/insurance exist.
• Aesthetics are debated: some prefer orderly panel arrays to asphalt and random cars; others dislike large energy infrastructure visuals in general.

Grid mix, nuclear, and other generation options

• Thread veers into whether nuclear is “good for baseload” versus increasingly uneconomic against cheap wind/solar plus storage.
• Disagreement over whether nuclear is intrinsically too expensive or just hamstrung by regulation and lack of scale; hydro’s risks and environmental impacts are also debated.
• Several argue that plunging renewables costs and flexible storage will undermine the need for traditional baseload.

EVs, V2G, and storage value

• One camp is enthusiastic about pairing solar carports with EVs as mobile storage: charge by day, discharge to home or grid at night, potentially getting paid twice (for demand and later supply).
• Others are skeptical: V2G pilots haven’t proven strong economics; battery wear, limited manufacturer warranties, and user range anxiety are key concerns.
• Some see more realistic near-term roles for EVs as controllable loads (“virtual plants”) rather than major grid-scale suppliers.

Solar potential, latitude, and building codes

• Commenters note Korea’s latitude (similar to US Southeast) is favorable enough; others point out that even cloudier, northerly places (e.g., Canada, UK) already make rooftop solar pay.
• There’s support for mandating or strongly encouraging solar and EV-ready infrastructure on new buildings, with examples given from Europe and the UK.

Politics, markets, and policy tools

• Several see parking-lot mandates as correcting market failures rather than “performative” policy: the grid and climate externalities aren’t properly priced.
• Some worry developers will game thresholds (e.g., build 79-space lots) or that canopies will always be costlier than ground-mount, but others argue that scale and standardization can reduce costs.
• A side discussion criticizes political resistance to renewables in parts of North America, contrasting with more proactive policies elsewhere.

Specifics of the Korean law and local constraints

• A contributor clarifies: the new Korean rule applies to publicly operated parking lots; private operators already have incentives but often avoid panels.
• In dense Korea, many lots sit on land seen as future development sites; owners resist installing solar because it complicates later redevelopment and adds removal costs.