It's nice to know that the rest of the world is still pushing forwards, up a steep hill, in first gear. I hope it can continue, and the hill shrinks.
It'll lead to sone interesting and unpleasant political fights in the future, I suspect.
In my country there is no govt subsidy for solar. But math doesn't lie. A typical residential system returns 16% on capital invested. Not surprisingly residential solar here is now measured in Gw.
The good news for the US is that it really doesn't matter if they fall behind. Solar can be installed so quickly that any lost impetus can be made in in a year or two. There's basically very little lead time required between decision and implementation.
Bit that's "boring" infrastructure. Cables, trenches, transformers. It can be done in "months" (perhaps a couple years) not decades.
For residential solar of course it's a non issue. The inverter caps the amount sent to the grid, and that cap is most often set to 0. (The 16% return I mentioned earlier is before feeding to the grid.)
From what we know...
- baseload electricity generation is not economical or practical (reactive) as a pure backup.
- a few grid-level mega-storage prototype projects, but nowhere near the scale of powering modern cities for a couple of off-weather days, or events where people congregate.
The hope is that – a combination of "couple of hours" of grid-level battery, and use that time to bring up a baseload. But the economics of that is abysmal (high capex/opex for what's essentially "hoping as an investor" for a few off-days so that this thing gets used after all). Those micro-nuclear-plants seem to still have a place.
As of now, grid as a backup is still only wishful thinking. Except for those who are already off-grid and changed their lifestyles to accomodate a few no-power days as a compromise.
Also why talk only about panels. Inverters are cost wise in the same order of magnitude, but much more complex artifacts.
Inverters are still fairly expensive for a couple reasons; Firstly economies of scale. A residential site buys 1 inverter, but 10 to 20 panels. A commercial site has an even bigger ratio.
Secondly Inverters are the bit that connects to the grid. So there are regulatory requirements which need to be tested for. And likely tested in multiple different jurisdictions.
Panels on the other hand are "difficult" to produce in volume. Largely because of the quality of raw silicon that is required. Its not that the panels themselves are complex, but the supplier chain to them is.
Panels degrade a bit (about 0.7%) every year. So after 25 years or so they're down to 80% of rated power. Or, put another way, after 25 years they're still delivering 80% of rated power.
Depending on space, it may be advantageous to replace panels at some point. Or you might add more and leave those alone.
But they don't just "stop working" - the performance drop off is pretty linear.
A warlike country with a history of antagonism to China is probably less secure than countries that have chosen to behave like good neighbors.
If you feel like panel production is strategic, which is an easy argument to make, and given that the US has a substantial ability to produce panels [1], perhaps a useful strategy would be to consume those panels as much as possible, subsidizing production to make it a growth area.
Indeed it might become a surplus, allowing for export, which in turn improves foreign relations. And the simple existence of the domestic market leads to improvements, better quality and so on.
I'm no economist but the above seems like a solid strategy to me. It would be most interesting to see the outcomes where a country pursued this strategy versus one that actively worked to marginalize solar, killing domestic production instead.
I wonder if there are more countries in the same boat which could be used to see the long-term outcome of the various strategic options?
[1] Solar systems comprise of more than panels. But the other parts are just electronics so not important in the context of managing solar as a specific product.
That is naive. China will become imperialistic if given a chance. Look at how they treat their neighbors.
>If you feel like panel production is strategic
I don't necessarily. But many strategically important things suffer the same fate. We cannot compete with China and other low-wage countries without restructuring the monetary system and probably our lifestyles. The Chinese know this and have used the situation to hoover up production capacity for many things that are critical to national security.
>US has a substantial ability to produce panels [1], perhaps a useful strategy would be to consume those panels as much as possible, subsidizing production to make it a growth area.
It would make far more sense to simply ban the import of cheaper panels, and let those who need the panels pay the true cost. The reason is that you could apply the same logic to every offshore-made item, and these subsidies would make random people pay for stuff that random other people are using.
>I'm no economist but the above seems like a solid strategy to me. It would be most interesting to see the outcomes where a country pursued this strategy versus one that actively worked to marginalize solar, killing domestic production instead.
I don't think anyone is trying to kill their domestic solar industry in general. But these installations have to be justified somehow. If the domestic panels are not the cheapest/best option available, they won't be used.
yeah, but I'm not in the US, so the US is not offering a compelling alternative at the moment (look at how they treat their neighbors...)
What excites me is that solar works one level up. Coal is energy, solar is a source of energy. If you sell solar panel manufacturing equipment, you work in the second derivative.
That literally levels up the game.
It’s more an issue of US ability to compete in an emerging market IMO.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide...
I may be wrong.
China is in some ways the world's factory.
Germany’s per-capita GDP was 76% of the U.S. in 2015 and is 61% today.
But its one of the few countries these days where I believe emigration would send me significantly backwards.
GDP isnt an interesting metric for this conversation tbh. The US can be "Winning" the monetary accumulation race while still being a terrible place in most other aspects.
Why dont you use "Adult literacy rate" as a comparison.
When I worked for a multinational company we had a lot of people from foreign offices visit the United States for the first time.
It was really interesting for me to see how many of them, especially those who built their worldview from headlines and internet comment sections, were so surprised to discover that the US wasn’t the dystopian hellhole like they had come to believe. It was almost a rite of passage for us to dispel a bunch of myths over lunches and explain how the things they saw in a headline somewhere were not representative of typical American experiences.
Don’t get me wrong, this country has a lot of things that need to improve. However, the internet comments version of the US has taken on a life of its own.
I’m now old enough to have a lot of friends who either worked in foreign countries for extended periods of time or even emigrated abroad, only to come to realize that the rest of the world isn’t as picture-perfect as they though it would be according to the Internet. There’s a dynamic where no positive comments about the US are allowed, but negative comments about other countries are considered out of bounds, denied, or downvoted away.
For example, the recent US reductions in COVID vaccine availability are something I vehemently oppose, but even the current US system makes it far easier to get a COVID vaccine than in the NHS. Every time I tell people this fact (which is easily verifiable by Googling it) I get shouted down or accused of making it up. Both online and in person.
Okay, I'll bite. During covid I got my three injections very easily. Currently you can get them for free if you are older/at-risk, or you can pay £100 to get them private, or your employer might pay for it as part of private insurance (as mine does)
What does the US do?
Show me the gap between the top and the bottom in Europe and the EU.
In Western Russia poverty looks like people earning $100-$200 per month. They exist in third world conditions. That's part of Europe.
Germany is an elite outcome for Europe for example. Population 83 million. Show me what the top 83 million in the US look like by comparison (roughly the top 25% of the US). Hint: it's not even close.
And from what I read, NYC is exceptionally safe for a US city, and London is exceptionally unsafe for a UK city.
It seems unlikely that this pattern of homicides would be explain by differences in general government policies between the U.S. and UK, such as healthcare policies.
(I'm particularly unsurprised that they'd get confused about _London_, because, well, what is a London anyway? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London . Even _human_ writers sometimes get confused about stats for London.)
Overall crime and especially violent crime is falling in the UK but there are some well publicised hotspots - phone theft, shoplifting
Social media tends to make people _feel_ like there’s a lot of violent crime.
It’s a strange double standard where the US gets evaluated as a mix of the worst headlines from every state, but when commenters talk about Europe being a utopia they actually refer to a cherry picked mix of the best parts of different countries.
Meanwhile, I can’t go anywhere in my American city without encountering people living in conditions worse than the average person in a third world country.
All this tells me that you have rose tinted glass and would rather ignore reality. Sure, there are plenty of things the EU does better than the US but I seriously doubt the bottom part of the population is living significantly better...
I don't know where you learned statistics but this is like comically bad.
I suggest you pick an even smaller country like Andorra ~82K people and compare that with the top 82K people in the US.
Seriously, it's well known the US is skewed towards the top and it's actually a problem... We all remember how Warren Buffet had to say it was weird how he played a lower marginal tax rate than his secretary, right?
Why don't you include Mexico in the USA? Or Venezuela?
The failure of your argument is front and center, you basically admit that Germany has done well for itself, and so you label it "Elite". But that Elite nature is recent and fleeting, its based on what the government has been able to deliver its citizens. The same things that the US government has failed to deliver its own citizens.
We aren't just comparing regions of land, but polities. Otherwise its moot. I think the US can do better, and it can do better by improving the performance of its polity. Germans however cant exactly vote to directly improve Russian literacy.
Because they aren’t part of the USA.
You didn’t address their point at all, which was to demonstrate that the USA is a rich country, and that both the top and bottom tiers are higher in wealth than top and bottom tiers in Europe. Even excepting Russia and other non-EU countries this holds true.
Yes, so the proper comparison is a Country.
Not a Region or a Continent.
You could stretch the EU to fit "Country" but the poster went even further and decided that Germany includes Russia.
Spain gets even poorer if you include Zimbabwe in its data for no reason at all. Crazy.
The US is definitely not "a terrible place in most other aspects". The US is at the top (or near the top excluding small countries like Switzerland) in:
- Consumer spending;
- Disposable income;
- Size of housing afforded;
- Top university rankings;
- Research and development;
Europe suffers from many things that would be hard to imagine in the US. Only 20% of European homes have air conditioning vs 88% of American homes. This causes real problems. In 2024, there were 62,700 Europeans who died from extreme heat, compared to ~3,000 Americans.
Air conditioning is simply not necessary in many places in Europe. Either because of climate or building standards (ie proper insulation and/or traditional building styles with a lot of thermal mass).
The size of housing is more due to limitations on development permits designed to limit urban sprawl, as well as differing traditions and preferences.
Having top universities is nice, but won’t help you if the rest of your education system sucks, because 99% of people do not visit the top universities.
Same with wealth and quality of life: the strength of a society is probably measured best by asking where you’d rather be poor, than where you’d rather be rich.
67 thousand people are dying each year in Europe from extreme heat, compared to 3k in the US. I'm sure AC "is not necessary in some places in Europe", but this lack of AC is a real material difference and has real, obviously negative consequences.
E.g. see: https://www.euronews.com/green/2025/09/23/more-than-62000-di...
"Europe is the continent that is warming most quickly, at twice the global average,” says Tomáš Janoš, ISGlobal and Recetox researcher and first author of the study.
At some point, bigger house translates to "more chores" and that is it.
- Universal healthcare: I have never needed to pay for my medicine, and I can rest assured that my family won't go bankrupt if I ever get cancer or something.
- Extensive paid leave: I have 1.5 month of it every year.
- Retirement age: 62 years here (for now, at least).
- Public education: I have two masters from public schools, that I got essentially for free.
Americans suffers from many things that would be hard to imagine in the EU.
> - Disposable income;
While it is undeniable that the US leads in these areas, it should be pointed out that the distribution of who spends and who has disposable income does matter. As in: if you and your 100 closest neighbors live in poverty, it matters very little if you have a multi-billionaire on the block who brings up the average disposable income.
> - Size of housing afforded;
Europe is a lot more densely populated than the US. You really should be comparing urban areas in both, or rural areas in both.
> - Top university rankings;
> - Research and development;
I'll grant you these.
> Europe suffers from many things that would be hard to imagine in the US. Only 20% of European homes have air conditioning vs 88% of American homes. This causes real problems. In 2024, there were 62,700 Europeans who died from extreme heat, compared to ~3,000 Americans.
As others have pointed out: European homes tend to be much better insulated, and have much greater thermal mass, than American ones. Moreover, a far bigger percentage of the American population lives in warmer climates than in Europe.
That being said, the deaths from extreme heat do show that something needs to change here in order to meet the warming climate. And things are. The push for heat pumps in Europe also opens the door to running them as coolers when needed (when they're the air-to-air type).
Agreed. But the median American has one the highest consumer spending and disposable incomes in the world.
> Europe is a lot more densely populated than the US. You really should be comparing urban areas in both, or rural areas in both.
OK. But housing in American cities is generally larger than the equivalent in European cities. And housing in American suburbs is likewise larger than in European suburbs.
Absoutely. But the differences are no longer insane when considering medians: US at 43 kUSD, and the rest of top 5 at 42, 41, 39, 37. While for the means, the US is 50% ahead of number 5 (top 5 goes 62, 47, 47, 42, 41). That's yaw-dropping, while the lead in medians is not. Randomly sourced from https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/disposabl... , which I assume is at least in the ballpark.
> OK. But housing in American cities is generally larger than the equivalent in European cities. And housing in American suburbs is likewise larger than in European suburbs.
Sure. But it's still important to compare apples to apples. And when doing so, the difference, like for disposable income, is far less stark.
Also, screens on windows (to keep out mosquitoes and such) are almost ubiquitous in the US (even in government-funded housing for poor people, the disabled and the elderly) whereas many homes in Europe do not have them (even though Europe has mosquitoes that spread illnesses).
If it were a matter of cost/availability, then surely they'd be everywhere on wealthy homes in affected areas in Europe?
But they do make it harder to exchange inside and outside air, as they increase air resistance, especially in hot summer evenings when there is little temperature difference and no wind.
Do you refer to screens that are held in place with magnetic or adhesive strips? Those are tacky. I mean screens in metal frames that are held in place by metal that was installed by the builder when the home was built. (The builder probably bought pre-made windows, and the screens, frames and hardware to hold the frame in place were an integral part of the window when it was bought.)
Everyone who's anyone just invites the mosquitoes in and plays the good host to them!
The average American really does not have a 40% better life than the average German.
It's bad decisions again and again, fundamentally from insecurity and incompetence. It all with the idea of trying to impress some really scared people with blustery demonstrations of force, because the scared people imagine themselves using lots of force if they were ever to have power in their lives.
That's going to take some a serious baby boom, I'm not seeing it.
> The policy outlook for renewables in the United States is so bleak that the IEA lowered the country’s renewable capacity growth expectations by 50 percent compared to last year’s projections.
Maybe room for optimism they are underestimating what non govt supported solar growth would be in the US?
If you hold assets which embody mines and wells, you are concerned at this point you're going to have a stranded asset. Strategically, you need the market to endure and so decisions of short term pain like dropping pricing, become important so you can stop people fleeing to other forms of energy. But, if the pricing has to drop below your cost of extraction and processing, there's a limit to how far you can go. Well, that point, for some forms of energy, was reached some time ago.
I think when the Saudi Arabian government started seriously diversifying their economy, it was a pretty strong signal.
Even in my home state (Queensland, Australia: Liberal/National right wing government, backed by coal and mining interests) the commercial realities of owning coal fired power stations has reared it's head, and the state government is making market interventions to prop up coal. It also fixes pricing decisions in state to return a significant profit to the state government with that coal price backed energy supply, which I believe is not dissimilar to Ontario. (happy to be corrected) -People are voting with their feed for rooftop domestic solar and batteries, and the pricing spiral continues.
They could do what the other (Labor) states are doing and get with renewables. They just cancelled pumped hydro, wind and solar deployments on pretty thin logic, but they can't stop the private sector and the move there is pretty clear: It's just cheaper as a path to profit, to sell electricity based on renewables right now. If you don't own a giant hole in the ground of coal generation, you get your money back faster building anything else BUT coal fired power now.
Here in the US, I'd expect we wouldn't be adding much new coal or nat gas either if it weren't for all the data centers going up everywhere. The amount of electricity going into the Internet and AI is wild.
I know these things use a lot, but relative to the national usage is it a significant number? I’ve read this statement a few times but the amount is never quantified to something that makes sense. Like, how much has electricity usage increased in the last two years and can be directly attributed to data centers?
https://www.carbonbrief.org/ai-five-charts-that-put-data-cen...
If bitcoin is using the same as 17 million people, that'd really not that much in relation to the overall population.
The Netherlands is entry 71 in a list of countries by population, making it very 'mid' indeed. You're comparing it to the USA, which is the third most populous nation on earth, of course it's significantly smaller!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
But hey, let's look at some better figures, estimated energy use is now in the region of 200TWh - https://www.statista.com/statistics/881472/worldwide-bitcoin...
Which puts it somewhere around an Egypt or a Malaysia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...
> If bitcoin is using the same as 17 million people, that'd really not that much in relation to the overall population.
That's a value judgement and you'll notice I've been careful not to put any into my comments.
Yes the Netherlands is "mid table" in a list of countries, but absent a good knowledge of statistics, population distribution, and geographic energy consumption, especially with relation to the Netherlands, it's a meaningless measure.
Since I had none of the above, I went to look it up. And frankly I have no idea if you actually compared Bitcoin to the Netherlands (in terms of energy consumption) or just randomly picked a country.
Let me be general. I have no idea about the Netherlands. I have no idea if you know anything about the Netherlands. That's the root of my concern with your comparison. It "sounds" like a useful comparison- but is it?
Now, had you said that Bitcoin consumes about 0.5% of global energy, and that there are just under 200 countries (meaning on average 0.5% each) then that's a measure I can absorb.
I might then point out that the US consumes 25% of the world energy supply, despite having 5% of global population, so the 0.5% of bitcoin consumption is really not moving the needle.
That’s on you.
Coal is largely keeping existing plants going. I’m doubtful we’ll see anything like we saw when 50% of US power in the early 2000s was coal.
Wars tend to happen when power dynamics change. Either someone is on the rise and thinks they can get more or someone is on the decline and can no longer hold on to what they used to have. I think the middle east is going to be a blood bath once the oil stops making bank. But its not just them, when oil goes away it changes the power dynamics across the world.
It would need possibly big, vulnerable plants to refine, but so does jet fuel and diesel now.
Adding that much electrical capacity is a civilisational task, but an electrical "JP-8 at home" plant in theory is a good security asset, especially for countries with poor oil supply.
Will these still be relevant in 15 years time, given the pace at which military drones are developing?
Perhaps long-range drones/missiles will be using fossil fuel, but not nearly as much as the heavy, bulky military vehicles designed to carry personnel.
And linking the two the Chinese Mingyang Smart Energy just announced an up to $2 Billion investment in a wind turbine factory in the UK.
‘World’s largest’ solar plant in Calif closing – $1.6 billion Ivanpah casts a shadow on DOE loans – ‘Federal data concluded the plant killed roughly 6,000 birds a year’
The 386-megawatt plant lagged in producing promised electricity levels and faced criticism from environmental groups like the Sierra Club because of its associated bird deaths. While estimates vary, some federal data concluded that the plant killed roughly 6,000 birds a year flying into concentrated beams of sunlight.
https://www.climatedepot.com/2025/02/05/worlds-largest-solar...
The US is by a dramatic margin the world's #2 producer of solar.
The US is by a very dramatic margin the world's #2 producer of wind.
None of which takes anything away from China's remarkable production.
In solar the US = #3 + #4 + #5 combined.
In wind the US = #3 + #4 + #5 + #6 combined.
The influence of the government is vastly overstated/overassumed.
Just two days ago, what would be rhe US's largest solar project, the 6.2 GW Esmeralda, was listed as cancelled by the BLM:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-and-environ...
After many months of delay because Trump said he was going to be really hard on the permit review, it was apparently cancelled for no reason.
Previously, Trump tried to retroactively revoke permits on offshore wind projects that were mid construction, with billions spent. Even if he didn't win in court, the scheduling of ships for this is so delicate that a delay of months could scuttle the build for years as ships move on to other engagements, basically ending any profitability.
This is having a huge chilling effect on our renewables buildout as the magus shakedowns are capricious and massive increase investment risk.
Even if there is growing investment in renewables in the US, it will be a shadow of what it would be otherwise.
And with gas turbines on many year back order, Trump is locking in higher electricity prices fire to shortages because he's trying to block one of the only fast ways to bring new generation into the grid.
We are witnessing the complete transformation of the grid to renewables. The question is if it takes 10 years or 20 years depending on how quickly we deploy incentives to phase out existing capacity.
https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2025/10/solar-and-wind...
Recently unsubsidized renewables and storage started undercutting fossil fuels in major markets around the world.
This is what is so interesting with renewable energy. They are the first energy source since the advent of fossil fuels lowering the price floor of energy globally.
Removing the credits will like I said only shift the implementation period due to using tax money to tilt the scale in one way or the other.
Beyond that, an increase in CO2 globally seems like it would be countered by an increase in plant mass taking it up?
> According to a recent study by the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, annual investment in the energy, industry, building, and transport sectors would have to more than double if current energy policies were to continue: from an average of around €82 billion between 2020 and 2024 to somewhere between €113 billion to €316 billion in 2035. Early transition models had projected a fraction of that.
We'll see, but I don't know what to believe anymore. In particular, Germany's deindustrialization is unmistakeable and expensive energy may be the culprit.
I personally believe the transition to electric vehicles will soon reach a tipping point due to reduced battery prices and won't add much cost. Costly building upgrades (insulation and heat pumps will be delayed), but renewable installation will continue strongly. It is just to cheap not to do it.
If AI turns out to be economically valuable the EU fixation on non-nuclear renewables may have turned out to be a very costly error.
Largely because the USA added $6 trillion to their GDP via fantasy 'hedonic' and 'imputed' components.
I would have two objections:
- Data center operation and construction is only a fraction of the value creation. If Europe is behind on the AI race it won't matter where the data centers are because the profits are going to go to US companies (as with Google and Facebook so far).
- What makes you think that Nuclear would help in any way to have cheap energy? Nuclear has become by far the most expensive energy generation method. Building new nuclear is unfeasible in the west.
A huge increase in gas prices triggered by Russia’s move last month to sharply reduce supplies to Germany has plunged Europe’s biggest economy into its worst energy crisis since the oil price shock of 1973.
Gas importers and utilities are fighting for survival while consumer bills are going through the roof, with some warning of rising friction.
“The situation is more than dramatic,” said Axel Gedaschko, head of the federation of German housing enterprises GdW. “Germany’s social peace is in great danger.”
https://www.ft.com/content/d0c5815f-f0a2-49ad-8772-f4b0fbbd2...
They did eventually move to get off of their reliance on Russian energy over a year later, but what they did as go back to coal and nuclear to keep the lights on after divesting from Russian energy imports:
In its race to find alternate sources of energy, the country has reopened coal-fired power plants, delayed plans to shut down its three remaining nuclear power plants, and pushed to increase capacity to store natural gas imported from other countries such as Norway and the US.
At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Lindner pointed to the speed with which a new liquefied natural gas terminal had been built in Germany - in a record of around eight months, he said. More infrastructure investments were planned, he added.
The Energiewende wasn't an attempt to go 100% renewable
Germany's dependency on Russian gas goes back to the 1990s and beyond
While people were worried about the impact of sanctions on Russian gas, the actual impact was lower than expected. Consumer bills did not go through the roof, partly due to government intervention
Combined power generation share from coal compared to before Russia started a war with Ukraine is slightly down, nuclear is 0 (or a percent or two if you consider imports), gas is marginally up
Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill (ugh..) has already rolled back most of those policies. Additionally DOE and EPA have announced termination of many projects, canceled previously approved funding, banned words such as "climate change", among tons of measures aimed at curbing the progress made.
You, of course, knew that and were being disingenuous.
Or you didn't know what and are simply ignorant.
https://thebulletin.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImag...
I was standing in a cornfield in Illinois this time last summer, with a farmer who grew corn for ethanol and was converting much of his fields to solar arrays. He said, I can grow in this acre, and he pointed to an acre in a good farmerly way, he said, in this acre, I can grow enough ethanol to run my Ford F-150 pickup, most beloved vehicle in the American iconography. It’ll run 25,000 miles off the ethanol I can grow on an acre in a year. If I cover that same acre with solar panels, then I can produce enough electrons to run my Ford F-150 Lightning, the EV version of the same truck, I can run that not 25,000 miles, but 700,000 miles.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_McKibben
[2] https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/why-is-this-happening/di...
An acre of solar is about 350-450,000 kWh/year. An F-150 Lightning does 2 miles per kWh. So that's about right.
One acre of corn makes about 400 gallons of bioethanol. Even the newest F-150s do an atrocious 18 mpg in real usage, so you need nearly 1500 gallons to go 25,000 miles. So this figure is presumably ignoring the non-ethanol content of the fuel, which is most of it.
Assuming solar isn't displaced by something else, one day we'll presumably see highly insolated areas exporting power over huge interconnects, but for now, fitting a panel basically anywhere is still better than not fitting it at all.
Absolutely not, Iowa is great for solar, it often provides more income than corn (and corn has massive subsidies), and is certainly better than most of Europe. Iowa really is not very far north
https://cleanenergycouncil.org.au/news-resources/new-guide-s...
* Picture of a city
* Picture of ploughed fields (was wooded preciously)
* Picture of any other type of power generation plant
We've cleared nature for farms for so long that the fields feel like nature that should be preserved.
Not content with cutting down the forests, now even the hedgerows are in the way.
Compared to what was there before (often forest), a gigantic monocrop industrial field is about as ecologically friendly as a car park. And the car park won't dump fertiliser into the water courses either.
Another option is of course put the solar where you cant for whatever reason grow food. Hopefully there is enough shitty land to so that.
In most countries: not really. And not to the extent that meat farming does, which is land-use broadly considered to be acceptable. One cow needs from under 1 to to 8 acres depending on how good the land is, and grazed land is roughly double cropland in the US. One cow produces roughly 10 people's beef intake in the US. Not to mention much of the cropland is already used for biofuel: diverting 60 million acres of arable land for energy is already a thing the US does. That 60 million acres of solar could produce 5 times current US electrical consumption.
One acre of solar makes roughly 30 US households (not people) of energy. Say 5-10 if you also need to cover current fossil fuel heating and transport. And obviously the energy mix won't be 100% solar.
So, on the face of it, it doesn't seem that solar power is an especially inefficient or wasteful use of land in most cases compared to other uses generally considered reasonable. And it also doesn't (further) damage land like intensive farming does. Whereas clearing natural land for solar could be more damaging.
Solar on roofs is not great in terms of coverage and is inefficient in terms of operational costs. Yes, the land was already used, so it's better then nothing and you can probably more or less recoup the house, so it's economical for the people who live there and the more the better. But you will still need to power denser housing and increasingly-electrified industry and transport.
Urban sprawl in the US is big, but still the US is only 3% urban. Even the UK, which is much denser is 8%. Farmland is far and away the biggest land user in most places.
On the other, a bad hailstorm means a lot of glass and scraps to pick up.
So, I’d worry about wind wrecking and broadly casting those slivers.
Rather than pick them up, maybe consider further crushing them into the ground. While that’s not good for farmland, the area under the plume of a coal plant is already broadly contaminated.
