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Solar/wind is great if you have practically unlimited, life- and disaster-free deserts to capitalize. Sucks otherwise. Which is probably why renewables are hig

Solar/wind is great if you have practically unlimited, life- and disaster-free deserts to capitalize. Sucks otherwise. Which is probably why renewables are highly regarded in specifically Australia and US, but not nearly as much elsewhere; stripping vegetations off mountainsides and farmlands to install mega-solars is just man-made disaster, not a positive decarbonization effort. It can be in places like in the middle of Australia, obviously.

rob74 2y ago
> stripping vegetations off mountainsides and farmlands to install mega-solars I'm really curious: who is proposing to do that? Ok, there are some solar projects that are installed in fields where you could construe that they could be otherwise used for food production, but guess what? They can still be used for food production - as pastures (https://ruralsolarstories.org/farm-friendly/solar-pastures https://ruralsolarstories.org/farm-friendly/solar-pastures).
defrost 2y ago
I'm unsure what planet you're from with that comment. A great deal of solar in Australia is urban rooftop, there's been a subsidized rollout, and solar farms here can co-exist with actual farms, eg: Solar farm trial shows improved fleece on merino sheep grazed under panels https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-grazing-sheep-agriculture-renewable-energy-review/101097364 https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-graz...
- numpad0 2y ago
  > I'm unsure what planet you're from with that comment. Let's put it this way: there's that much variance in population density on this planet. Around myself, personally owned roof is a luxury. A parking lot is a 5-story building if not 5-stories structure directly below a building. On the other hand, to some others, solar panels as sheds in a ranch is just a fancy shed that they're going to need anyway. Rooftop solar for one household on a midrange under-$1m 50-story mega-condo with 20 rooms per floor reduces power draw of the building by 1/1000th. Outside the mega-city is mountain ranges and water sources. The rest 999/1000th of power has to come from there if it can't be sourced in-city, which means stripping mountains to bare soil and covering lakes in mega floats and dealing with environmental releases all the time, or alternatively just finding a valley in the mountains and building massive metal cans to boil rocks could work too. Might sound like a William Gibson parody, some places are just like that. Some parts of his works are effectively just portrayals.
ben_w 2y ago
> Solar/wind is great if you have practically unlimited, life- and disaster-free deserts to capitalize. Sucks otherwise. Bit more complex than that: the UK is north of the Canadian-US border and has parts at the same latitude as southern Alaska, has fantastic wind resources, and somehow is managing to do not too badly with PV either. > stripping vegetations off mountainsides and farmlands to install mega-solars is just man-made disaster, not a positive decarbonization effort. Human imagination doesn't handle the huge numbers involved very well, maths is necessary. If we did what you're describing (which we don't need to because PV doesn't have to be in a contiguous sheet and rooftop PV can supply a non-trivial percentage of demand, and also a poor choice geographically, and you wouldn't want to because geographical diversity is good), then the EU could get 133% of its needs from Slovenia, which is one of the smaller countries in the union (only three are smaller), and that's already accounting pessimistically for capacity factor: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=area+Slovenia+*+1kW%2Fm%5E2+*+20%25+*+10%25 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=area+Slovenia+*+1kW%2Fm... (Likewise with the US, while Massachusetts would be a really poor choice of location to tile with PV, if you did it would supply 117% of US demand all by itself: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=area++Massachusetts+*+1kW%2Fm%5E2+*+20%25+*+10%25 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=area++Massachusetts+*+1...). If you put a 3m wide strip of PV on or by the side of the EU road network (not rail, not airports, not car parks), that would also meet 96% of current demand by itself. And for the US, that same number with the same assumptions about capacity factor and width would be 87%. Where PV doesn't work is dense city-states like the Vatican, because rooftop PV is only a "non-trivial percentage of demand" not "all of demand".

rob74 2y ago

> stripping vegetations off mountainsides and farmlands to install mega-solars I'm really curious: who is proposing to do that? Ok, there are some solar projects that are installed in fields where you could construe that they could be otherwise used for food production, but guess what? They can still be used for food production - as pastures (https://ruralsolarstories.org/farm-friendly/solar-pastures https://ruralsolarstories.org/farm-friendly/solar-pastures).

defrost 2y ago

I'm unsure what planet you're from with that comment. A great deal of solar in Australia is urban rooftop, there's been a subsidized rollout, and solar farms here can co-exist with actual farms, eg: Solar farm trial shows improved fleece on merino sheep grazed under panels https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-grazing-sheep-agriculture-renewable-energy-review/101097364 https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-graz...

numpad0 2y ago
> I'm unsure what planet you're from with that comment. Let's put it this way: there's that much variance in population density on this planet. Around myself, personally owned roof is a luxury. A parking lot is a 5-story building if not 5-stories structure directly below a building. On the other hand, to some others, solar panels as sheds in a ranch is just a fancy shed that they're going to need anyway. Rooftop solar for one household on a midrange under-$1m 50-story mega-condo with 20 rooms per floor reduces power draw of the building by 1/1000th. Outside the mega-city is mountain ranges and water sources. The rest 999/1000th of power has to come from there if it can't be sourced in-city, which means stripping mountains to bare soil and covering lakes in mega floats and dealing with environmental releases all the time, or alternatively just finding a valley in the mountains and building massive metal cans to boil rocks could work too. Might sound like a William Gibson parody, some places are just like that. Some parts of his works are effectively just portrayals.

ben_w 2y ago

> Solar/wind is great if you have practically unlimited, life- and disaster-free deserts to capitalize. Sucks otherwise. Bit more complex than that: the UK is north of the Canadian-US border and has parts at the same latitude as southern Alaska, has fantastic wind resources, and somehow is managing to do not too badly with PV either. > stripping vegetations off mountainsides and farmlands to install mega-solars is just man-made disaster, not a positive decarbonization effort. Human imagination doesn't handle the huge numbers involved very well, maths is necessary. If we did what you're describing (which we don't need to because PV doesn't have to be in a contiguous sheet and rooftop PV can supply a non-trivial percentage of demand, and also a poor choice geographically, and you wouldn't want to because geographical diversity is good), then the EU could get 133% of its needs from Slovenia, which is one of the smaller countries in the union (only three are smaller), and that's already accounting pessimistically for capacity factor: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=area+Slovenia+*+1kW%2Fm%5E2+*+20%25+*+10%25 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=area+Slovenia+*+1kW%2Fm... (Likewise with the US, while Massachusetts would be a really poor choice of location to tile with PV, if you did it would supply 117% of US demand all by itself: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=area++Massachusetts+*+1kW%2Fm%5E2+*+20%25+*+10%25 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=area++Massachusetts+*+1...). If you put a 3m wide strip of PV on or by the side of the EU road network (not rail, not airports, not car parks), that would also meet 96% of current demand by itself. And for the US, that same number with the same assumptions about capacity factor and width would be 87%. Where PV doesn't work is dense city-states like the Vatican, because rooftop PV is only a "non-trivial percentage of demand" not "all of demand".