In 2014, Scott Brusaw, an electrical engineer from Sandpoint, Idaho, told the world about his idea to revolutionize energy generation and transportation in a YouTube video called “Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways.” Scott Brusaw and his wife Julie co-founded the company Solar Roadways, intending to replace every road in America with hexagonal interconnecting solar panels, generating clean energy for the entire country. Brusaw’s video went viral, amassing over 22 million views in the last four years and raising 2.2 million dollars for the company. However, despite the supposed benefits of the technology, many experts question the feasibility of Solar Roadways as it relates to manufacturing, safety, economics, and the environment.
Deconstructing Solar Roadways proves challenging due to the many claims about their technology. Solar Roadways contain photovoltaic solar cells (a type of solar cell that generates electricity by gathering the sun’s photon emissions and building up an electric charge) and LED light fixtures beneath a surface layer of sturdy, rough glass. The company claims that their roadways, in addition to providing solar energy, can use the LED lights instead of paint to create changeable road configurations, detect weight on the panels and notify drivers of upcoming animals or fallen branches, keep an above-freezing surface temperature to melt snow and ice without the need for plows, and create room for corridors beneath the roadways to house electrical and cable wires underground. Not to mention, a landscape lit with multicolored LED lights would, as the YouTube video says, “finally look like the freakin’ future!”
In order to achieve these noble goals, Solar Roadways must overcome some challenges. To cover America’s 28,000 square miles worth of road with Solar Roadways would require immense quantities of glass, water, LED lights, and more. While Solar Roadways prides themselves in using as much recycled material as possible, purchasing these materials requires a large investment. In 2010, Solar Roadways estimated a cost of $10,000 per 12 foot by 12 foot glass panel. Multiplied out across every road in the country, Solar Roadways would need to spend $56 trillion dollars on glass alone, equivalent to the GDP of the United States, the European Union, China, Japan, and India combined. The LED lights would also be expensive – to illuminate a road in broad daylight requires very powerful lights. Images of lit solar roadways online are usually taken with less-powerful LED lights after dark. Labor costs would also loom high – laborers installing solar roadways require far more specialized skill than laborers installing asphalt, thus requiring higher salaries. Electrical engineers have a median salary of $91,410 per year, whereas asphalt road pavers have a median salary of $38,545 per year. Though these manufacturing costs may prove less of an issue for smaller Solar Roadways installations, a nation-wide adoption may be too tall a task.
Solar Roadways claims to be completely safe, but engineers and government authorities question the comprehensiveness of their testing. The glass surface of the roadways contains grooves, which help cars gain traction while braking. Though Solar Roadways claims that a car traveling 80 miles per hour could brake on their surface, they have not built a stretch of road long enough to test this hypothesis. The weight of heavy vehicles creates a further challenge for Solar Roadways – as durable as their glass may be, it pales compared to the durability of asphalt. Solar Roadways claims to be able to support a 250,000 pound vehicle, but again, their testing was through a 3D model, not an actual construction. However, if the hypotheses of Scott and Julie Brusaw are correct, Solar Roadways may be a safer alternative to asphalt roads. Accidents relating both to snowy/icy roads and animal collisions could be prevented through Solar Roadways. The prevention of these accidents would lead to fewer deaths and injuries as well as tremendous cost savings from hospital bills, car repair, and cleanup.
Solar Roadways would create widespread changes in the economy, both positive and negative. As mentioned earlier, Solar Roadways has the potential to create many jobs in manufacturing and installation. Solar Roadways also has the potential to kill many jobs such as asphalt pouring and snow plowing. Outside the industry, Solar Roadways could help economic productivity by allowing companies to stay open and work during snow storms. Paying the costs of solar roadways would influence the economy as well. Currently, Solar Roadways has received most of their money from government grants and an IndieGogo fundraising campaign. Crowdsourcing, while effective for some organizations, cannot sustain a multi-trillion dollar business. As for government grants, the effect on taxpayers must be taken into consideration. Though Solar Roadways does provide a positive externality by eliminating future climate change mitigation and adaptation costs, the extent of that externality may not be enough to cover the business.
It is worth noting, too, that Solar Roadways does not have a monopoly on the photovoltaic road market – two other companies, SolaRoad in the Netherlands and Wattway in France, not only provide competition, but have developed their model far more than Solar Roadways has. SolaRoad has already installed a 100-meter bike path in the Netherlands, and Wattway has partnered with the large French transportation infrastructure company Colas and has been commissioned by the French government to install 1,000 kilometers of photovoltaic roads by 2021 provided they pass safety tests. France and the Netherlands both have some of the world’s cleanest energy portfolios due to heavy investing in energy sources that could provide energy independence. Thus, SolaRoad and Wattway’s respective successes could be a reflection of the companies’ strategies and decisions, the enthusiasm of their governments, or perhaps even the lower cost associated with paving a smaller country. The three companies currently remain isolated in their respective countries, but perhaps shifting from three monopolies to one oligopoly (and then eventually a more competitive market) would entice companies to improve their models and find cost-cutting solutions. Direct government grants can be effective to encourage research and academic innovation, but run counter to the concept of a free and competitive market for a commodity. Government subsidies for the entire photovoltaic roadway market, perhaps, may be a more economically sound policy to account for the industry’s positive externality without favoring particular companies.
Environmentally, Solar Roadways sounds amazing, but may not be the most effective option. Solar Roadways provide two primary environmental functions: increasing the albedo, or reflectivity, of roads and generating clean energy to reduce fossil fuel dependence. Asphalt absorbs most of the sunlight that hits it, converting its energy into heat and warming the nearby areas. Solar Roadways would take the sun’s energy and use it to replace greenhouse gas emitting energy sources, thus combating climate change. However, though solar energy generation seems like the most compelling reason to build solar roadways, it may not be a logical reason at all. To be most effective, solar panels must be angled toward the sun. In southern states such as Arizona, a flat road could capture a high percentage of the sun’s rays, but in northern states, solar panels are typically tilted to achieve maximum effect. Additionally, panels in a solar roadway cost far more to build than rooftop solar panels. Though rooftop solar has far less pizzaz than Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways, the costs of nation-wide solar roadways may be better spent elsewhere to help the environment. Solar Roadways proudly remarks that nation-wide solar roadways would generate triple the amount of electricity Americans use today. While an abundance of green energy sounds amazing, there is truly no reason to generate that much excess electricity, especially at such high cost. Covering, then, a third of the nation’s roads in Solar Roadways may be a marginally more sensible strategy from a purely environmental perspective, but even still, the cost of that venture still significantly exceeds the cost of generating the energy through rooftop solar. As exciting as they sound, Solar Roadways may not be the best environmental protection strategy.
Since costs and benefits will undoubtedly change as the technology develops, it would be premature to dismiss Solar Roadways out of hand. Lots of questions about the costs and benefits of the technology remain to be answered. Eric Weaver of the Federal Highway Administration spent years with Solar Roadways testing the concept to determine its viability for implementation. “I’d say it’s not very realistic to cover the entire highway system with these panels,” said Weaver. “[But] if you don’t reach for something, you’ll never get there.”
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Image from https://theconversation.com/solar-panels-replaced-tarmac-on-a-road-here-are-the-results-103568