It might be because there's a person in the photo, and France is very strict on photographing people.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...

In terms of the formatting/brevity, Reuters was originally a wire service. They'd cover news in foreign locations and send it by telegraphic wire to local newspapers that would license the content.

Telegraphs charged by the word and didn't have letter case. Cryptic in-band signals like "NO USE FRANCE" are a relic of that time.

Since the link OP posted is to the B2B part of Reuters, I'm assuming they still haven't modernized this system.

Building solar panel installations in remote locations still requires linking that back to the main grid, and all the in-between infrastructure needed to transform and transmit that power. Building it in an urban location allows you to tap into the existing grid without much added public investment, similar to how some power grids will purchase power from homeowners as an added incentive for doing a home solar install.

Something like 70% of the Korean peninsula is mountainous, and a lot of the space between mountains is taken up by cities and farms. This puts flat land at a bit of a premium

In a city the best place to put them first is roof tops. Rooftop solar has minimal structural requirements relative to parking lot canopies.

I think this might be partially an indirect tax on parking lots inside a dense city. It raises the cost of using land for parking, but does so in a way that provides shade and clean energy at the same time.

South Korea is pretty mountainous so yes, available land is much less compared to America where we have square miles upon square miles of open land. South Korea is little less the size of Kentucky.

It seems inefficient to not put solar panels over a parking lot. I'm not sure how shade is a major consideration here or how light weight solar panels are a large expense compared to the cost of space in a city. Parking garages are often net negatives to cities and parking lots are generally major negatives to cities since they drive density down and reduce foot traffic (which reduces economic churn). At least this way the city gets another small use out of that area in the form of some local electricity generation. Density and variety of use are major factors in urban health.

It adds utility to an arguably less useful use of space (shut up, I used use two words in a row and twice here), minimizes transmission costs and losses (the power is needed right there in the parking lot or where the people parking there are going to), and doesn't displace other land use (farms or nature).

South Korea has a population density of 507/km² [1]

For comparison, the San Francisco Bay Area has a population density of 430/km² [2]

I doubt they have vast tracts of undeveloped land. And while solar panels can replace agricultural land or wooded areas, doing so isn't always a big political win.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area

I'm an American, and it seems like a great use of land to me. This sort of a policy is particularly sensible in areas where it's hot, and there are extensive parking lots next to places that are mostly active during the day.

Instead of just having a heat island, you generate power to run AC in the associated buildings, and you also get shade for the parked cars.

Yes, build far away and wait 30 years for transmission lines to be built or to be connected to the grid.

Building where people live means (near) zero transmission infrastructure.

>It seems inefficient to put solar panels over parking areas as it requires significant amount of structure which costs a lot more than shade it creates is worth

If you're putting up structures to shade cars from bright sun anyway then it doesn't take a lot of legislative pressure to enforce "the thing you put up has to be solar panels".

Not familiar with SK, but in principle this parking shade had better be panels works. This is doable within both governmental, social and financial frameworks in countries that get decent sun. Whether SK qualifies as "decent sun"...idk...seems borderline to my unqualified eye

it seems wildly efficient to use the massive amount of dead space we cede to cars. Without cars, parking lots are just massive heat sinks that trap and hold heat. Might as well do something with them to make it a little bit better. It also has the added benefit of creating shade for people in the summer and cover during rain.

Correct. There really isnt “more remote” in Korea because it’s such a small nation geographically speaking. You’re never more than a few hours from the farthest border.

Even if no more energy infrastructure is destroyed from the moment of this post, the Iran war will do more to speed this up than decades of science, I think.

> This is the kind of thing that every western ( or “rich” ) government should have mandated years ago.

If it's cost effective there's no need to mandate it.

If it's not cost effective but you want it anyway, you can explicitly subsidize it instead of mandating it.

Does South Korea do mandated parking minimums like I hear is common here in the US? That would tell whether this is a tax on business property in general, or a tax on driving / personal mobility specifically.

A better version for shade and city beautification is to force trees around/within the parking lot.

I wonder if this will make it preferable to build parking structures rather than parking lots.

A mandate for renewable energy is authoritarian now? What? This is a great initiative.

The idea of an 'owner' doing whatever they want on 'their' property is ridiculous. They bought that land with restrictions and an understanding that it was part of a regulatory framework. Should an 'owner' be able to set up an industrial chemical plant in the middle of a city without any regulation? How about an open pit mine? A gun range with no regulation? Should I be able to create a massive speaker system pointed at your house next door to drive you away with no consequences? All actions are actually interactions. Everything someone does on their property has impacts to others. We give 'owners' a lot of leeway but that shouldn't be unlimited. Requiring things like solar on roofs, or gutters on roofs, or restricting roof uses, etc etc are all valid concepts. It can, and should, be debated how far those regulations should go but 'get your government off my land' is never a good argument.

Every government tells property owners what they can and cant't do. Find one that doesn't, and you'll have found a failed state.

I was going to say, there must be some research on how much/little this impacts the urban heat island effect.

Top of my head thought:

Depends on the colour of the cars and pavement. A PV will send ~20% of the light energy hitting it down the wire, the rest = heat.

PVs don’t really reflect back much light for obvious reasons.

The increased surface area might help it radiate more heat at night on a clear day, unless the panels are flat and then it’s no change really.