Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

This is good to hear. I assume location must play a large part in this? Solar must be more cost-effective in, say, the Mojave desert, than it is in Alaska.

I sometimes wonder if the widespread adoption of solar is going to have an environmental impact that isn't immediately apparent. Every solar panel you put on the ground is going to take up solar energy that could otherwise be absorbed by a plant, which in turn means that plant can't absorb carbon from the atmosphere. So unless we just limit ourselves to rooftop solar panels there's sure to be some sort of environmental impact if we just switch all our energy to solar.

> I assume location must play a large part in this? Solar must be more cost-effective in, say, the Mojave desert, than it is in Alaska.

Yes, each peak kilowatt of utility-scale solar produces about 240 watts average in Arizona, 140 in Maine, and 100 in Germany ("capacity factors" of 24%, 14%, and 10%). I assume the number for Alaska would be even lower.

> Every solar panel you put on the ground is going to take up solar energy that could otherwise be absorbed by a plant, which in turn means that plant can't absorb carbon from the atmosphere.

Yes, and also it will reflect less heat back into space than the plant or bare dirt would, locally raising the temperature. These will start to be important problems when the quantity of power produced by solar panels is about 100 times larger than current world marketed energy consumption. I expect that this will happen in about 30 years. However, merely switching all our energy to solar will have an effect that's about 100 times too small to matter.

> it will reflect less heat back into space than the plant or bare dirt would, locally raising the temperature

I'm not sure this checks out... the light gets absorbed, but the energy doesn't get turned into heat, it gets turned into electricity. If anything, where it's covering up concrete or asphalt it should reduce the conversion of sunlight to local heat.