# Environmental Protection in the Planning of Large Solar Power Plants
## 5 Discussion and Conclusions  
There are positive and negative impacts of solar power plants on the environment. As a rule, the positive impacts of large solar power plants have wider social and ecological significance, that is, they must be seen in a wider spatial, ecological, social, and energy context. This mainly refers to two dominant positive influences:  
1. Reducing the emission of polluting substances into the air: The production of electricity in solar power plants, unlike the production of electricity using fossil fuels, excludes emissions into the air, which indirectly has a favorable effect on the health of the population, biodiversity, and other elements of the environment. An additional contribution is that the development of solar energy in the future leads to a reduction in the use of fossil fuel power plants whose negative impact on the quality of the environment is multiple;
2. Climate changes: Obtaining electricity in solar power plants does not produce gases with the greenhouse effect, so their contribution to the \"stabilization\" of the climate is significant. Thus, the positive impact on slowing climate change is another important and positive aspect of solar power plants, especially when coupled with the proportionate closure of fossil fuel-based power plants. As for the possible negative impacts of solar power plants on space and the environment, they depend on the size and concept of the project and the specificity of the location where their realization is planned, and are mostly localized to a specific location and its immediate surroundings. The dominant negative impacts of solar power plants are related to the occupation of large areas of land, biodiversity, and the landscape. All the negative impacts of solar power plants come from the occupation of large areas of land. However, it should be kept in mind that the importance varies depending on whether the areas that are devastated (quarries or areas where mining activities took  
Figure 2: Graphs for displaying the impact of individual planning solutions [55]. place in the past) or are unusable for any other human activity (desert areas or barren lands) are occupied, or whether they are high-quality agricultural land, meadows, pastures, or other areas rich in biodiversity and specific landscape features. In the context of the impact on the land, sustainable solutions are needed, which can be achieved by optimally choosing the location of the wind farm at the earliest stage of project development, that is, by adequate solutions in the planning process and SEA. In addition, certain conceptual solutions are possible that can affect the relativization of the problem of occupying better quality land for the realization of solar power plants. Examples are the so-called agrisolar power plants like agrisolar power plant \"Agrosolar Kula\", which is taken as a case study in this paper. Agrisolar power plants, in addition to using solar energy, ensure the continual usage of land for agricultural purposes, which is a well-known practice in developed and ecologically oriented countries. As part of the agrisolar power plant, solar panels are placed on a structure raised to a height sufficient to cultivate and maintain the plants below them, while achieving the optimal angle for receiving solar energy and transforming it into electricity. In addition to avoiding a change in the use of agricultural land, agrisolar power plants have the following benefits for cultivated agricultural crops: there is no direct light, there is a specific microclimatic effect, protection from hail, reduced evapotranspiration, and higher water efficiency. In this way, yields are increased, while at the same time the carbon footprint of agriculture is decreased. In addition to the above, the use of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and other toxic substances that pollute soil and water is usually not foreseen in agrisolar power plants. This helps the land to regain its microbiologically repaired, and sometimes even organic state, which raises the value of the land.