[kragen]

The part I was confused about was that you said "35 square meter years per person" but I guess you mean per person per year? Then wouldn't that just be 35 square meters per person?

Wind is awesome, but I don't think the total wind resource at tower-like heights is sufficient to wean the humans off fossil fuels; but I don't have hard numbers. Maybe power-to-gas is a solution.

Thank you very much for helping me explore this!

[adrianN]

Yes I meant you need 35 square meters producing peak power 24/7 for a whole year to power one average German's life.

The numbers I've seen suggest that in the case of Germany, wind power can get you most of the way to a carbon free economy, but you still need to cover 1-2% of the land with solar panels (i.e. all roofs and a bit of land). Under the assumption that we also improve energy efficiency by insulating homes, switching to heat pumps, and switching to electric cars. Without those efficiency improvements it was unlikely that we'd have enough space. Under this scheme we'd need a little battery storage (for a day of consumption or so), and power-to-gas for longer periods of low generation.

I'm not sure whether he has talks in English, but Prof. Quaschning has some nice resources in German about this topic.