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Manufactured products only get cheaper by scaling and improving the manufacturing process. You should know this because it's the reason why silicon photovoltaic
by throwaway4aday 2y ago
Manufactured products only get cheaper by scaling and improving the manufacturing process. You should know this because it's the reason why silicon photovoltaics have gotten cheaper after starting at some rather eye watering prices. Land is a finite resource with an extremely complex system of regulations, laws, ownership, uses and speculation built up over 10,000 years of history and any conversion of land for one purpose necessarily excludes it for many other purposes so there is massive competition over prime real-estate and many un-intended future consequences resulting from development.
Not worrying about land use when it comes to power generation is very, very much like not worrying about carbon emissions when it comes to power generation/transport/manufacturing "The atmosphere is enormous! Why should we worry about emissions when our current demand for power and transport is so tiny?"
- adrianN 2y agoIf we covered the land we currently use to grow ethanol with panels we would be mostly done with the generation part of the energy transformation. Prime real estate is valuable, but there is a lot of nonprime space. Panels have a limited lifetime. If in the future we figure that land becomes more valuable for some reason we can still replace them.