This is scientific American 60 second science.

I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

Solar companies are obviously in the business of building solar energy farms.

But here's another way the solar developers are spending

their money to protect and relocate desert tortoises from their sunny desert

solar farms to the tune of at least 60 million dollars.

It's an incredible amount of money to do something that is not necessary.

Not necessary to the generation of solar energy, that is, says Rebecca Hernandez,

because why not just put your panels elsewhere?

Hernandez and Earth System scientist and ecologist at UC Davis

says the alternatives to developing on wild lands are many.

Put photovoltaic panels over rooftops or parking lots, atop salty or

contaminated land unsuitable for farming. Or why not install photovoltaics? A photovoltaic is a photovoltaics. A flotovoltaic installation that is placed on pontoons that float on the water.

She and her colleagues identified one and a half million football fields worth of surface

area on these types of alternative sites in California's Central Valley alone, with a combined

energy generation potential of 4,300 terawatt hours per year,

using the solar panels available on the market today.

That's enough to power the entire United States.

This paper isn't to say that we think that all energy should be derived from solar energy.

Obviously a diverse portfolio of energy sources helps to provide resilience to our energy systems, but really our study demonstrates

that we have a lot of untapped potential out there.

The report is in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

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