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"For the US to be powered exclusively by wind power it would require 26,619,401 acres of land, an area nearly equivalent to the state of Tennessee." https://www
by kbutler 7y ago
"For the US to be powered exclusively by wind power it would require 26,619,401 acres of land, an area nearly equivalent to the state of Tennessee." https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf (wind farm size, not windmill size)
The area of California is 105 million acres, so cover 1/4 of the area of California in wind farms.
Urban land in the US is about 70 million acres (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/major-land-uses/#Summary%20tables https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/major...), so this would be another 3rd the amount of urban sprawl of all cities and towns in the country.
Solar is a little bit better - only 16,393,234 acres, or 1/6 of California, but you can't really do agriculture on that land like you could with wind farms.
And this is without overprovisioning or increasing electricity use to replace gasoline.
Do you consider either of those options viable? What overprovisioning factor are you going to shoot for?
I don't think it's just a binary choice: I think it's a blended choice, but you've got to have a heavy reliance on nuclear if you want to dramatically cut CO2 emissions.