Decarbonizing the Grid Means Using a Lot More Land to Produce Electricity

Real clear science ^ | July 11, 2022 | Ross Pomeroy

[daniel1212]

Electrifying most energy demand in order to replace fossil fuels with carbon-free sources of power like wind and solar is widely seen as necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change, but it comes with a significant side effect: using much more land to produce electricity.

A team of researchers hailing from the University of Michigan, UC-Santa Barbara, UC-Berkeley, and the Breakthough Institute reported the finding last week in the journal PLoS ONE....

"Renewable energy sources like ground-mounted photovoltaics, concentrated solar power, and wind feature prominently in many decarbonization scenarios, but since they can have higher land use intensity than fossil fuels, large-scale deployment of these technologies could considerably increase energy sprawl and loss of natural habitat," they added.

Decarbonizing the grid to stave off the worst effects of climate change is widely seen as necessary, but with a rapidly growing human population and dwindling productive land available for agriculture, it's also necessary to consider land use in addition to carbon emissions when planning a future electrical grid.

Nuclear power was by far the most land-efficient source of power, the researchers found. It was 285 times more efficient than ground solar photovoltaics and 143 times better than coal. Geothermal also scored well, as did wind (provided it's installed wisely – more on that in a bit). Biomass, ground solar, and hydroelectric were the worst on average.

[Paal Gulli]

Windmills enough to power the continental US would need an area slightly larger than the state of Nevada. And all that land area becomes uninhabitable because of the noise from the spinning rotor blades and the subsonic ‘thrum’ the windmill induces into the ground.

Enough nuclear power plants to power the continental US all could be fit inside Dallas County. And human people still could live alongside them.

[bigred44]

I read that to replace the electricity demand of New York City it would take a wind farm the size of Connecticut.

We just have to tell our friends in Hartford and Stamford to move so NYC can go green. Of course, if the wind is not blowing well on any day, we probably need part of New Jersey as a backup.

[beethovenfan]

Not if we promote nuclear power.

[Salman]

The ruling class is preparing a regimen of extermination. The environmental line is just a ploy. They are ployers.

[markman46]

These are the same ahole researchers who want to suck carbon out of the atmosphere, I guess they forgot the we are carbon based life

[Mogger]

Why are we even generating electricity on this planet?

Gerard O'neill, several decades ago advocated power generation in space. We have all the technology on the shelf.

Go to the moon and/or asteroids. Mine and smelt all the metals needed to build the power plants there with 1/6 gravity on the moon and less on asteroids.

Launch the materials from there to small factories in orbit around the earth and construct the power plants in geosynchronous orbits.

These would be simple steam generators. If you understand how a steam generator works, half of the power comes from the steam, the other half from the suction of condensing the steam.

A power plant in orbit would have the ultimate heat on the sun side of the plant, and the ultimate cold on the shaded side.

You beam the power to earth with microwave energy to converter stations.

You wouldn't need a huge grid of power lines as receiver and converter stations could be located in local areas.

I expected, back in the 1970s that well before now this would be where our power came from.

[daniel1212]

"Prognosis: As energy costs rise, food become too expensive to buy. Food riots begin; the country becomes ungovernable, except by brute force; America"

accepts dictatorship in trading freedom for "security."

[PIF]

Feudal rule makes modern dictatorship look like heaven on earth. Read more about the previous systems of energy usage and how it was managed under feudal rule in the Middle Ages.

Under feudal rule the only “secure” people are the rulers. People become peasants and are nothing, fit only to be raped and used for target practice.

[NorthMountain]

‘Decarbonizing’ the power grid means destabilizing the power grid. No, the green communists won’t go for nuclear; it’s too reliable and too environmentally friendly. That’s the last thing they want. An unstable and unreliable grid for us peons is exactly what they want.