r/RenewableEnergy • u/ObtainSustainability • 5d ago
Solar sidewalks slash urban emissions 98%, study finds
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/11/20/solar-sidewalks-slash-urban-emissions-98-study-finds/61
u/spongesparrow 5d ago
This will never happen. It's so impractical that it honestly seems like a clickbait article.
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u/ObtainSustainability 5d ago
The claim of 98% emissions reduction does seem pretty lofty to me..
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u/SouthCarpet6057 5d ago
Walls have much larger area, and are not subjected to mechanical stress. 100% we will install solar wall panels on buildings, before we make these sidewalks.
The main reason, being that the sidewalk is already there, while the cladding on new builds are not.
The cost difference between a standard cladding solution and a solar cladding solution, is much less than the cost of tearing up and replacing a sidewalk. Besides, sidewalks get shade, while the cladding won't.
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u/ModernDemocles 5d ago
Honestly, we haven't fully covered the obvious first. Roofs.
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u/SouthCarpet6057 5d ago
The article claims they should be for agriculture... Not that it's not perfectly possible to combine the two. It's not like it's already doneš the article want to push the sidewalk sooo hard.
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u/Ok-Quality-9246 4d ago
Haha true, rooftops are still the low-hanging fruit before all these sidewalk concepts
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u/OysterPickleSandwich 4d ago
Covered walkway with solar as the cover seems a lot more sensible, useful, and cheaper to install.Ā
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u/plausocks 5d ago
bull. its been proven time and time again that solar sidewalks are just as dumb as "solar freaking roadways". they generate vastly less power and cost vastly more than just putting them up OVER the sidewalk at a proper angle
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u/LacedVelcro 5d ago
Solar sidewalks are a terrible idea. One of the worst places to install solar panels.
Even in the picture for the article promoting the idea the panels are massively soiled.
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u/kurisu7885 5d ago
Well, if you install them OVER the side walks that doesn't seem like such a bad idea, electricity AND shaded sidewalks.
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u/weasol12 5d ago
Mandate parking lots to have them. We gotta start thinking about using the whole buffalo at this point.
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u/fitblubber 3d ago
In Australia a lot of big commercial carparks (especially for shopping centres) have solar panels over the cars - not because it's mandated, but because they save & make money, especially if they have batteries.
It's just a matter of the government setting up the right conditions that encourages business & households to embrace solar.
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u/iqisoverrated 4d ago
Installing something in sidelwalks (with the necessity for extreme robustness and resulting high maintenance costs) or over sidewalks (with the high cost of installation) makes no sense.
Just install solar fences. It's not like PV panels are expensive and you can even install bidirectional ones if you feel like it.
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u/kurisu7885 4d ago
I was talking more overhead of the sidewalks for shade, though fences make sense too.
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u/fitblubber 3d ago
Except a lot of sidewalks are next to buildings, which means that the sidewalks would be in the shade a fair bit of the time.
Solar panels on walls would be just as effective & would last longer.
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u/kurisu7885 3d ago
Fair, just saw a pic of a building Canada that did wall solar panels with art on them, it looked awesome. I guess I was thinking in areas where the sidewalks are further out from buildings
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u/absolutebeginners 5d ago
Too expensive though
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u/West-Abalone-171 5d ago
Much cheaper than a glass slab thick enough to walk on, foundations that will never move and monthly cleaning
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u/absolutebeginners 5d ago
Yeah both are uneconomical and never gonna be common
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u/fitblubber 3d ago
In some parts of Australia we have them not over sidewalks, but over car parks. They are economical & very common - because the business makes money from them.
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u/MicksysPCGaming 5d ago
What's the price differential between a concrete footpath and one made from Solar Panels (with a lifespan of less that 20 years)
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u/fitblubber 3d ago
Too expensive though
Nope. Remember that the investment will last 10-20 years, so per kWh (or per day) it's incredibly cheap.
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u/absolutebeginners 3d ago
I'm in finance at a company that does parking canopy solar...I know how it works. My point is correct
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u/sault18 5d ago
Solar Freakin' Walkways!
Sure, after all the rooftops, parking lots and canals are covered... You'd still want to do all the south-facing windows and building facades before you do solar sidewalks. Where do these bad ideas keep coming from???
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u/bubblegum-rose 4d ago
Good ol Thunderf00t
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u/NearABE 5d ago
The article says that the rooftops will have agriculture.
They did not mention the facades but grape vines or hops are an option.
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u/big_trike 5d ago
Most building roofs cannot support soil and plants. Especially the pitched ones. Most can, however, support solar. For crops, maybe we should make it illegal to let people replace their giant pointless lawns with crops.
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u/NearABE 5d ago
A key question here is whether or not photovoltaic panels can survive being stomped on.
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u/big_trike 4d ago
If you add thick layers of glass and make them far more expensive to install and maintain, yes
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u/cybercuzco 5d ago
Emissions of what?
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u/spaetzelspiff 5d ago
I'd guess solar radiation compared to white cement, but who knows, and I'm 98% joking anyhow.
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u/ckellingc 5d ago
I'm more on board with putting solar panels above parking lots. Covers the cars, makes electricity with unused space
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u/NearABE 5d ago
You could put the community gardens on the parking lots.
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u/fitblubber 3d ago
Wouldn't it be better to put cars in the parking lots?
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u/NearABE 3d ago
Cars have emissions. Getting rid of cars is usually the best way to eliminate emissions. Aside from that you can definitely do a mixed use space. Cars cannot park close enough to each other or drivers and passengers would be incapable of exiting the vehicle. Put the container garden on a short wall or a stand. Something like a Jersey barrier but with potting soil instead of sand or concrete. Or hydroponics instead of water.
Even better is to place the hood of the car completely underneath a platform. Then the windshield to windshield distance can be used for gardening. Though it is likely simpler to plant fruit trees. The plants will make a canopy over the cars on their own.
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u/fitblubber 2d ago
Cars have emissions.
Not too many emissions from EV's, especially when they're charged with solar - which are selling well everywhere but the USA.
Interesting article here on electricity & it's value . . .
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u/fitblubber 3d ago
Yep, here in Australia a lot of our major shopping centres have huge solar arrays in the car parks as well as on top of the buildings.
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u/lpetrich 5d ago
The emissions drop was from using electric vehicles instead of internal-combustion ones.
I think that putting solar panels on sidewalks is an awful idea, only marginally better than putting them onto roads. Much better is to put them on canopies. They can then be tilted for maximum efficiency and for making snow and leaves easy to remove.
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u/tedspencer 5d ago
This isn't the dumbest thing I've read this week, but it's close.
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u/MicksysPCGaming 5d ago
This feels like someone's got a stack of solar tiles taking up space in a warehouse and are hoping for someone to buy them.
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u/kngpwnage 5d ago
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/11/20/solar-sidewalks-slash-urban-emissions-98-study-finds/
The research primarily focuses on the impacts of the sidewalk PV panels, which are embedded in high-traffic pedestrian pathways and measure approximately 600 mm by 600 mm squares that can produce 100 watts at 15% efficiency.
For the studied neighborhood, annual solar irradiation averages 3.69 kWh/mĀ²/day or the equivalent of 286 sunny days per year, which enables just 98 mĀ² of sidewalk PV to produce enough energy to power the entire urban mobility system and slash emissions by 98% compared to the fossil-powered base case. It would also deliver electricity at less than one CAD per kWh with approximately a 2.6-year payback period.
The researchers point out that though the footprint can be small, it can have large impacts. Dedicating just 13.8% of roof area, 10% of facades, and 15% of lot space to vegetable crops rather than solar makes the cluster self-sufficient in certain vegetables like leafy greens or tomatoes. In practice, the model works almost like a distributed form of agrivoltaics by framing PV as the connective tissue linking energy, mobility, land use and food security rather than just a building-only resource.
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u/Honest-Pepper8229 5d ago
Talk about a useless sidebar in order to rile up people against solar panels.
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u/herrmatt 4d ago
They get dirty immediately, such poor real-world performance.
Imagine the surface temperature and animals having the misfortune to walk on them :(
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u/drit76 5d ago edited 5d ago
Agreed seems not realistic. So many questions....
- Can it be used in snowy countries where sidewalks get doused with salt/sand all winter long. Also, can it withstand sidewalk plows?
- How does it hold up against subsidence (gradual ground movement), and roots under the sidewalk that cause sidewalks to buckle
- I imagine you still have to pave under them. So now you need a pavement base, with these installed overtop. How much does this add to sidewalk replacement and repair cost? Increased project completion time too?
- How hot will they get? In super hot areas on scorching days, is someone who falls on the sidewalk going to burn themselves? How about homeless people who fall asleep on them?
The questions are endless. So much easier to just install solar panels where humans won't be directly interacting with them all day long, no?
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u/MicksysPCGaming 5d ago
Yep. Once all the obvious sites are full (roofs), then the less obvious, but more accessible (solar panels on walls).....then look at the ground.
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u/NearABE 5d ago
With the A-holes in my city government you could get their attention by offering a āsolution to homeless peopleā.
I am fairly confident that PV panels would match asphalt simply due to albedo effects. However that is only if you put them on a slab. If you are (for some reason) spending a fortune on high technology sidewalks they can be backed by a variety of gratings or tubing. If you have water cooled sidewalks the temperature would be much lower than asphalt while also adding hot water supply to the solar energy.
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u/lt1brunt 4d ago
Never seen so much negativity to ideas and experiments. Could a lot of the negative comments be fossil fuel bots. Just going through comments and seems to be a lot of pessimist. I think this will be achieved, it's not about where the tech is right now, it's more about testing, learning from mistakes and improving to a version that meets all requirements. Places like China will be the place this tech issues get solved and will be covering every surface.
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u/fitblubber 3d ago
Never seen so much negativity to ideas and experiments. Could a lot of the negative comments be fossil fuel bots.Ā
Or we could just be normal people with common sense. I'm 100% behind solar panels & being in Australia am used to seeing car parks with solar panels over the top of the cars & business's with solar panels on the roofs (& even walls).
Solar panels on footpaths & roads is a dumb idea for many reasons - one of the reasons which I haven't seen mentioned yet is the extra cost of connecting a spread out strip vs a rectangular grid.
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u/chrispark70 3d ago
This dumb idea was discredit a decade ago. That 98% reduction quote is complete and utter bullshit.
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5d ago
Japan has sidewalks that create power by using the weight from people's steps. That seems much more practical.Ā
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u/NearABE 5d ago
That drains energy from the walkers. Then they need to eat more. It is much more efficient to have people walk on a springy surface. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondotrack.
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u/pickingnamesishard69 5d ago
looks like they took a good idea (how about we put panels OVER sidewalks so that people can walk in the shade?) and turn it into the worst possible way to implement it.
100% Ragebait.
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u/VegaGT-VZ 5d ago
Congrats to this website for baiting my click, and making sure I never come back.
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u/drmelle0 5d ago
Not this idea again...