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We could provide the world's total energy needs by covering a small portion of the Sahara desert with solar. We are not running out of land anytime soon. There

We could provide the world's total energy needs by covering a small portion of the Sahara desert with solar. We are not running out of land anytime soon. There is also a practical limit where wind energy takes too much energy out of weather systems, affecting climate, but that point is also far beyond the current world energy usage. We're not running out of renewable energy anytime soon.

isostatic 9y ago
A single hurricane produces about 200 times the global energy use per year. We're not able to extract power from the atmosphere to make a dent.
deleted 9y ago
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smitherfield 9y ago
>We could provide the world's total energy needs by covering a small portion of the Sahara desert with solar. The Sahara desert is extremely sandy, and extremely windy, which makes it a pretty terrible, or at least prohibitively-expensive place to build a solar farm. It is also extremely complicated and extremely expensive to transmit large amounts of power over long distances, particularly across national borders (everyone's on a different AC standard), particularly across many national borders.
- Reason077 9y ago
  It's not really that complicated or that expensive to move power over long distances via HVDC interconnects. China has many overland HVDC links, some thousands of km long and with huge capacities, to move renewable energy from inland areas to the coast. The UK and Iceland are considering an undersea HVDC interconnector more than 1000 km long. The distance between potential solar array sites in the northern Sahara and the electrical grids in Southern Europe are considerably less than this.
  - lmm 9y ago
    > The UK and Iceland are considering an undersea HVDC interconnector more than 1000 km long. At an estimated cost of about 3 billion, for less than 1/3 the capacity of this power station.
    - Reason077 9y ago
      Icelink's estimated cost is about £2.4b, which would be shared by both sides. Hinkley C's construction cost is £20.3b, and the cost to UK consumers over the plant's lifetime exceeds £50b.

isostatic 9y ago

A single hurricane produces about 200 times the global energy use per year. We're not able to extract power from the atmosphere to make a dent.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

smitherfield 9y ago

>We could provide the world's total energy needs by covering a small portion of the Sahara desert with solar. The Sahara desert is extremely sandy, and extremely windy, which makes it a pretty terrible, or at least prohibitively-expensive place to build a solar farm. It is also extremely complicated and extremely expensive to transmit large amounts of power over long distances, particularly across national borders (everyone's on a different AC standard), particularly across many national borders.

Reason077 9y ago
It's not really that complicated or that expensive to move power over long distances via HVDC interconnects. China has many overland HVDC links, some thousands of km long and with huge capacities, to move renewable energy from inland areas to the coast. The UK and Iceland are considering an undersea HVDC interconnector more than 1000 km long. The distance between potential solar array sites in the northern Sahara and the electrical grids in Southern Europe are considerably less than this.
- lmm 9y ago
  > The UK and Iceland are considering an undersea HVDC interconnector more than 1000 km long. At an estimated cost of about 3 billion, for less than 1/3 the capacity of this power station.
  - Reason077 9y ago
    Icelink's estimated cost is about £2.4b, which would be shared by both sides. Hinkley C's construction cost is £20.3b, and the cost to UK consumers over the plant's lifetime exceeds £50b.