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The Largest Rooftop Solar Farm in America Will Power 1/5th of a Single Hotel

The massive solar array atop Mandalay Bay is both an encouraging sign of progress and a reminder of how far we have to go.

MGM Resorts, one of Las Vegas's largest and most iconic hotel companies, has installed what is apparently the largest rooftop solar array in the nation—and the second-biggest in the world—atop the iconic Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino's convention center. Some 20,000 solar panels now sprawl out across a whopping 20 acres, soaking up the scorching Nevada sun and transforming its rays into juice for slot machines.

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This is big. It's an impressive signal for how far solar power has penetrated the mainstream. It's a laudable feat of both human engineering—it's huge—and politics—Nevada has a litany of good incentives for clean energy on the books. Because of both, the electricity will be generated at a cost that is "about the same" as the competition.

And yet, when it's up and running, according to MGM, the array will "offset 20 percent of the resort's peak demand." That's it. And it is this tidbit that reveals the essence of our mindmeltingly massive energy problem, condensed into a single, allegory-laden news item. The single largest rooftop solar power plant ever built in America—a noble and impressive achievement—will generate just enough electricity to run 1/5th of a single American resort.

This is not to diminish the achievement itself; more rooftop solar and more clean, cheap power is unquestionably great. But it's a stark reminder of the consumerist obsessions such progress is up against, and how many future achievements like it we'd actually need if we are truly hoping to innovate climate change into oblivion.

Mandalay Bay has over 3,000 spacious hotel rooms, three heated pools, a 'shark reef' aquarium, a wave pool that constantly circulates 1.6 million gallons of water, 24 elevators, 135,000 square feet worth of casino, and all the other energy-grubbing accoutrements you'd expect from a Las Vegas resort. According to MGM's release, its total power demand is something like 32 megawatts—enough to power a small city full of big American homes.

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That is the problem, ultimately. Mandalay Bay itself, and the materially lavish, resource-chugging ecosystem it is a part of, is hopelessly unsustainable in its current state. To run just that one hotel entirely on clean power would require a 100-acre solar farm. And that's to say nothing of the millions of gallons of water it sucks out of one of the most arid regions in the nation. And the entire strip is packed with resource hogs like it—15 of the world's 25 largest hotels are clustered there.

rooftop solar in Vegas becomes a potent metaphor

Las Vegas is often invoked as the embodiment of the rampant excesses and consumerist maximalism our society aspires to as a whole (and usually fails to acknowledge the true scope of the environmental impact of)—gauche luxury-shaped artifice, carefully air-conditioned comfort, and shopaholic distraction galore. Barring some miracle energy fix (fusion is just ten years away, again!), this kind of consumption is deeply problematic.

If we are to reduce carbon emissions to levels anything close to in line with what scientists say are necessary to avert catastrophic levels of warming, we need to drastically reduce energy waste, as well as generate cleaner alternatives. Yet we're operating under the assumption that there's a technological fix coming to save us. That's how you get statements like this, spoken by elites who likely very well believe them to be true:

"The completion of this solar array demonstrates our steadfast commitment to the principles of environmental responsibility," Jim Murren, Chairman and CEO of MGM Resorts International, said when announcing the installation of the project. Actual environmental responsibility, of course, would involve not erecting and nurturing a megapolis in the desert. A sprawling solar plant that runs one-fifth of a hotel on clean power is an encouraging baby step, not a conservationist principle affirmed.

But that's how the system is wired right now. While we should indeed celebrate these milestones, we need to honestly recognize the breadth of the problem they're helping to address. By some estimates, we have a matter of years to rapidly draw down our carbon emissions before we're locked into a pathway to extremely disruptive levels of warming. We're going to have to start making some hard choices. As such, our rooftop solar in Vegas becomes a potent metaphor:

Do we want to build out a truly spectacular level of clean energy to keep our electric carnival of shopping, gambling, and carousing intact? Are we capable of that? Or can we recognize our profligacies, and rope them in while improving technology and reaching for a happy medium? Or, will we lay down few more solar panels and feel a bit better as the whole place cooks?

As it is, the giant solar array atop Mandalay Bay is both an encouraging sign of progress and a reminder of how far we have to go.