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Large-scale solar: > requires 5.6 GW of solar energy. For context, this is roughly 10 days of solar panel production in 2021, though the industry continues to
by rrss 4y ago
Large-scale solar:
> requires 5.6 GW of solar energy. For context, this is roughly 10 days of solar panel production in 2021, though the industry continues to grow explosively. 5.6 GW consumes roughly 112 square km of land
- 77pt77 4y agoHow does this compare to just planting trees? No maintenance and they also sequester carbon. All this seems to me like replacing trees with silicon and maybe that doesn't make sense.
- kragen 4y agophotosynthesis is about 3% efficient the most popular solar panels are about 21% efficient solar panels don't require maintenance, though efficiency drops if they get dusty trees commonly require a lot of maintenance, i guess you don't know any gardeners; most afforestation and reforestation projects totally fail because they neglect this but the biggest issue is that trees generally don't desalinate seawater mangroves sort of do, but their output is water vapor, and generally growing mangroves in ocean water decreases evaporation from that ocean water rather than increasing it in summary, how pv-powered desalination compares to just planting trees is that pv-powered desalination produces fresh water and planting trees doesn't