| > I agree that these are important issues to consider, however I disagree that this is important in the context of energy production. Land use by all types of energy production is miniscule compared to agriculture, urbanisation and roads (in another post someone mentioned that the space parking lots occupy in the US is 5 times larger than the area needed to power the whole country with solar). Thanks for bringing up the point about comparing energy production's land use against the area taken by other human activity. Agriculture, particularly meat consumption and the required farm fields to feed livestock, is certainly one of the worst offenders in this context. As far as I can tell, the generally car-based city planning with the parking lots, roads and urban sprawl are also a problem in this regard especially in the US. So, I agree that certainly fixing these should have a higher priority from the viewpoint of improving land use. However, I don't think the land use by electricity production can be completely disregarded. I was unsure about it being minuscule, so just as a quick calculation: - Electricity from coal requires a median of 15 m² for 1 MWh of energy. - In 2021, electricity use in Finland was about 86 775 000 MWh. As heavy industry (including steel production) and traffic are going electric, that number is bound to go upwards. - The total area of Finland is 338 472 km² with about 34 524 km² of that being inland water, resulting in 303 948 km² of land area. By year 2050 counting from today, using the numbers above I get that 11,67 % of Finland's total land area would be ruined by coal production if all the electricity was produced with coal (luckily it's not), mined locally. Also note that the chart in TFA is about electricity production. Countries with cold winters, such as Finland, also require heating. With a cleaner source, such as 100 % nuclear or roof installed silicon PV that figure would be around 1–2 %. > It is telling that almost all pro-nuclear articles that we have seen recently argue which should put more money into nuclear vs renewables, not arguing about what is the quickest way to turn of coal plants. On the forums where I find most of the environmentalist discussion I read, the generally held view is that both nuclear and renewables are required. It's not about either-or. The goal is decarbonizing ASAP while respecting nature in other ways as well and supporting the notion of humankind's prosperity. |
87 TWh = 86 e6 MWh
15 m2/MWh therefore land use is 15*87e6 m2=13.05e8 m2=13.05e8/1000^2 km2 =1305km2
As a fraction of land 300 000/1305=0.00435 so less than 0.5% will be used for electricity production.