[WHATDOESIT]

If you have so much free space as US or Romania, maybe. There are much smaller states without enough sunshine though, and people hate having wind turbines visible near their houses (also, if you care about ecology then the blades are a big problem). Both wouldn't be nearly enough to replace fossil fuels anyways - only nuclear allows us to ditch natural gas and benzin/diesel entirely.

[ben_w]

Romania by itself has the land area for 3.5 TW of electricity average over a year, even assuming 15% efficient PV and a 10% capacity factor; the actual capacity factor given Romanian climate would be more like 5.5 TW; current global electricity use is only 2.7 TW.

Cyprus (the island) has a better climate, so despite its small size, it could produce 137% of the entire EU's current annual demand from PV.

Land use just isn't close to being a limiting factor, so even though PV does indeed need more land than some other things, it just doesn't matter.

[WHATDOESIT]

You're talking about electricity, I am talking about replacing the entire energetic demand. That means fuel for ICE vehicles, ships, etc in addition to all the fossil fuels used purely for heating.

What Cyprus, Romania and other states do internally is not so interesting - every state is selling electricity for outrageous prices internationally, so it's not really something we'd want to rely on.

[ben_w]

My point remains valid even if you want to replace all energy and not just what is already electrified, and also boost global energy use to the per-capita rate of Qatar (I think the highest in the world at about 2.5 times the average of the USA), and also boost world population to 10 billion, and also the PV is placed slightly worse than if it was randomly scattered.

Simultaneously. And by a large margin.

There's a lot of land on this planet of ours.

(The reason I chose Cyprus as an example is because of how small it is, and yet could supply so much if it wanted to. Any single one of Bavaria, Lombardy, Brussels, Lubusz, Aragón, Île-de-France could individually supply the entire EU just from PV, not merely meet their own needs, but again this is just to give a sense of scale — the correct placement of PV is seldom "all in one place").

[ncmncm]

Land use, even if, would not matter, because solar coexists with existing uses. Float solar on reservoirs and canals, post it in fence-rows on pasture and cropland, lay it out on industrial and warehouse roofing.

[ncmncm]

Wishing doesn't make it so.

[WHATDOESIT]

I don't know what you're talking about, we're building and the reactors we built previously work cheaper than any renewable/gas/coal/whatever, the only problem is that we don't have enough, but we will have more soon. You're the one wishing for renewables - and indeed, wishing won't make it happen.

The Greens slowed us down for two election intervals but they're gone and the building is resumed. Don't let Greens decide your policy and you can build too - and when you take them out of the equation it suddenly becomes cheap. We will happily build for you if your nuclear industry is not up to it, all it takes is ask.

[ben_w]

> the reactors we built previously work cheaper than any renewable

This is generally false, depending on region PV is the single cheapest source of electricity right now by a significant margin.

Don't get me wrong, I value nuclear even if only for diversity of supply, but it isn't cheap.

[WHATDOESIT]

If you're comparing only solar panels, then maybe. I'm comparing the whole system - batteries, transmission, gas usage when it's not enough sunshine for a third of the year here, etc. Our electricity got more expensive mostly thanks to renewables, not cheaper. Now we're building reactors to have it cheap again.

[ncmncm]

Your electricity got more expensive because of an artificial NG shortage. Failing to build out solar will leave you buying from neighboring countries that didn't, at prices less than it costs to operate your reactors.

[WHATDOESIT]

I am not talking about the current situation, I am talking about the times when gas was cheapest ever around 10 years ago. People were building resistive electric heating because it still came out cheaper than using gas.

Currently our state is net-exporter and probably always will be since the states around us are refusing nuclear altogether. And Germany nor Austria has never ever offered electricity cheaper than our own.