Aren’t all solar thermal technologies the same in terms of environmental benefits?
Some solar thermal technology components can have adverse environmental impacts of their own. BrightSource decided to employ a more expensive dry cooling approach in its power plants, which greatly reduces the load on local water resources, including transportation and disposal of waste. In addition, the potential for introducing hazardous materials into the environment is greatly reduced when the working fluid in a solar thermal system is water/steam and not the synthetic oil of trough systems, which is known to present issues in terms of hazardous waste, spill cleanup and fire hazards.
