Submitted by envatted_love t3_yzbamw in dataisbeautiful
mhornberger t1_ix1ssrc wrote
It's interesting that I saw it argued for years that to advocate for any but the cheapest energy was to advocate for poverty, for people to literally starve. That switched very quickly, around a decade ago, when solar and wind became economically competitive. Suddenly the whole conversation shifted away from economics to land use.
Land use arguments are hinky, because they don't take into account the fact that, with renewables, land can be used for multiple things simultaneously. PV can coexist with wind, and also with crops via agrivoltaics. Offshore wind is also expanding rapidly. PV can also go on rooftops, over canals and reservoirs, etc.
And the US has a lot of land. Since 2000 the US reduced farmland by 5%. That alone is ~50 million acres, or 78125 miles^2. That alone, if used for PV (or crops+PV, via algrovoltaics), would provide the current US electricity demand almost 8x over. And even that ignores wind, rooftop solar, hydro, etc. Obviously what's best for the US might not work for, say, Singapore, but there's a lot of land out there.
envatted_love OP t1_ix4f49s wrote
> land can be used for multiple things simultaneously
Yes, and I think the article tries to address this.
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