[bryanlarsen]

> The area to cover with renewables to power just a single smelter is huge.

That would be an issue only if that prevented the land from being used for other things. Wind power generation doesn't prevent farming on the land or prevent fishing on the ocean. Solar can be deployed on rooftops or parking lots. Solar developments often support grazing animals underneath the solar panels.

[bleepblorp]

The offshore wind farms I have seen photos of have the individual wind turbines packed too closely together to safely navigate a fishing boat between them.

Fish are not uniformly distributed, however, so the fishing impacts of offshore wind farms can probably be reduced by not installing wind farms in fishing grounds.