Hide the coal mine with solar panels

Farm Policy tweeted out a map of the US showing the relative area of each type of land use. The biggest chunk is for “Cow pasture/range” with a moderate size block for growing livestock feed. Other large chunks are for timberland – public, private, and corporate. The land used for golf courses, growing flowers, growing tobacco, and trees for maple syrup and Christmas are all tiny.

Prof. Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist, looked at that map and tweeted that the amount of land needed to supply the US with clean energy is comparable to what we currently use for maple syrup or golf – a square smaller than 120 miles on a side. This doesn’t mean replacing all those maple trees. In many places the land can do both farming and energy production.

Ramez Naam, who writes about clean energy, puts some numbers behind what Hayhoe wrote. The whole world could be powered by solar using less than 1% of the earth’s land area. Others complain using that much area for solar panels can threaten ecosystems and endangered species. Naam replies, true for some places, but the threat is considerably less than for fossil fuels. In addition, there are places we could put solar panels that would not be a problem and could be an advantage: over parking lots (to provide a shade for your car); on the roofs of existing buildings, especially warehouses and big box stores; and on abandoned coal mines.