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The size of the USA is 9,833,520 km² not 42000 km² according to Wikipedia. So 12000 km² corresponds to roughly 0.1% of the total land area. To get a feeling i

The size of the USA is 9,833,520 km² not 42000 km² according to Wikipedia. So 12000 km² corresponds to roughly 0.1% of the total land area. To get a feeling if we could use rooftop solar to satisfy energy consumption. LA has an area of 1200 km², assuming 30% of the City are buildings and parking lots (not sure if that is a valid assumption) putting solar on those would satisfy about 3% of energy capacity requirements. Judging by that it doesn't seem outrageous (orders of magnitude off) to say we could satisfy all electricity demands with rooftop solar, especially if we add wind and hydro to the mix.

Aachen 4y ago
> The size of the USA is... You assume that when someone just speaks of "the country" and "we need" without specifying, it's the place where people think they're the whole world. I left it out to see if exactly this would happen because I was curious. I'm surprised not one but two persons felt certain enough I must mean the USA to correct my figure for the USA in a comment. Goes to show. My username is a city in Germany but apparently that wasn't enough of a hint that it is, for once, not about the USA. Also the USA uses double the energy per capita and has twenty times more people, 900 TWh should also be a giveaway for those who know any country's energy consumption, or at least it was easy to check that I didn't merely take a wrong km² value (also, I'm using metric). For what it's worth, I just looked up land use in my country, it's "less than 7%" built up (buildings at least, sounds like it also includes roads and parking lots) according to the statistics bureau. 4/5ths is nature, recreation, agriculture. https://www.clo.nl/en/indicators/en0061-land-use-in-the-netherlands https://www.clo.nl/en/indicators/en0061-land-use-in-the-neth... That the USA has it easy with gigantic slabs of unused land around and still they're not really making use of it, so that bodes well for those with more people per km² which I think is most other rich countries (aside from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Canada where it's probably not sunny enough anyway, at least not in the places where there is plenty of unused space). > would satisfy about 3% of energy capacity requirements Which figure for energy consumption are you using here?

Aachen 4y ago

> The size of the USA is... You assume that when someone just speaks of "the country" and "we need" without specifying, it's the place where people think they're the whole world. I left it out to see if exactly this would happen because I was curious. I'm surprised not one but two persons felt certain enough I must mean the USA to correct my figure for the USA in a comment. Goes to show. My username is a city in Germany but apparently that wasn't enough of a hint that it is, for once, not about the USA. Also the USA uses double the energy per capita and has twenty times more people, 900 TWh should also be a giveaway for those who know any country's energy consumption, or at least it was easy to check that I didn't merely take a wrong km² value (also, I'm using metric). For what it's worth, I just looked up land use in my country, it's "less than 7%" built up (buildings at least, sounds like it also includes roads and parking lots) according to the statistics bureau. 4/5ths is nature, recreation, agriculture. https://www.clo.nl/en/indicators/en0061-land-use-in-the-netherlands https://www.clo.nl/en/indicators/en0061-land-use-in-the-neth... That the USA has it easy with gigantic slabs of unused land around and still they're not really making use of it, so that bodes well for those with more people per km² which I think is most other rich countries (aside from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Canada where it's probably not sunny enough anyway, at least not in the places where there is plenty of unused space). > would satisfy about 3% of energy capacity requirements Which figure for energy consumption are you using here?