Japan is converting defunct golf courses into solar power sites

This is a brilliant idea:

The company Kyocera has plans to transform Japan’s forgotten golf courses into sites of alternative energy. These open green spaces were in high demand in the 1980s, but have declined over the years, as participation in the sport is down 40% from the 1990s. Since then, courses have been abandoned and overgrown, but it turns out they’re ideal locales for solar power—the lack of trees mean that they receive a lot of sunlight.

Kyocera’s inaugural project is currently under construction, and it’s set to be a 23-megawatt solar plant on a golf course in Kyoto prefecture. The slated completion is 2017, and once done, it will produce enough energy for about 8,100 households.

Kyocera has another planned golf-course-to solar-field conversion in development which would generate enough energy to power over 30,000 households.

If only we could start doing something like this in drought-stricken California, where golf courses are drinking up so much of our water.

There are 866 golf courses in California. An average 18-hole course uses 90 million gallons of water each year. That's enough to fill 136 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Some courses are simply shutting down due to lack of water. Others have stopped watering anything out of play. Yet two thirds of California's courses are still irrigated with drinking water.

Of course, I still like George Carlin's idea of what to do with golf courses.