[hshdhdhehd]

Can full scale solar make a dent in the land available in any country for food? And how does it compare to urban sprawl? (Although suburbs may have the benefit of solar on the roof powering the house below pretty well).

Another option is of course put the solar where you cant for whatever reason grow food. Hopefully there is enough shitty land to so that.

[grues-dinner]

In any country? Yes. For example, Luxembourg (1200km² of farmland, 677,000 people).

In most countries: not really. And not to the extent that meat farming does, which is land-use broadly considered to be acceptable. One cow needs from under 1 to to 8 acres depending on how good the land is, and grazed land is roughly double cropland in the US. One cow produces roughly 10 people's beef intake in the US. Not to mention much of the cropland is already used for biofuel: diverting 60 million acres of arable land for energy is already a thing the US does. That 60 million acres of solar could produce 5 times current US electrical consumption.

One acre of solar makes roughly 30 US households (not people) of energy. Say 5-10 if you also need to cover current fossil fuel heating and transport. And obviously the energy mix won't be 100% solar.

So, on the face of it, it doesn't seem that solar power is an especially inefficient or wasteful use of land in most cases compared to other uses generally considered reasonable. And it also doesn't (further) damage land like intensive farming does. Whereas clearing natural land for solar could be more damaging.

Solar on roofs is not great in terms of coverage and is inefficient in terms of operational costs. Yes, the land was already used, so it's better then nothing and you can probably more or less recoup the house, so it's economical for the people who live there and the more the better. But you will still need to power denser housing and increasingly-electrified industry and transport.

Urban sprawl in the US is big, but still the US is only 3% urban. Even the UK, which is much denser is 8%. Farmland is far and away the biggest land user in most places.

[hunterpayne]

You are confusing the rating of the solar panel with the amount of power it actually produces. Solar has a capacity factor of .1. So if you are doing a hours of daylight x rating of the panel calculation, you are over by 5x. If you are doing a hours of the day x rating of the panel, you are over by 10x. Basically you are confusing capacity vs utilization.

Or to provide simpler proof, if your calculations were correct, utilities would be falling over themselves to build solar. They aren't and will resist doing so. There are good (correct) engineering reasons for that, not political ones.

PS We use a faction of the farmland we did in 1900 to feed 2x the number of people. Fertilizer and biotech improved the amount of food produced per unit of land back in the 70s by an incredible amount. And without either lots of new nuclear or fossil fuels we can't continue to do that. This is why we don't decide these things with votes but instead employ engineers.