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Climate Change / Re: Ford “Drastically” Cutting EV Lightning Workforce Hours
« Last post by banddag on Today at 05:13:25 pm »
I don't see you addressing the sheer acreage that will be taken out of agricultural production for placing these panels where they can get sunlight in meaningful quantities (not happening at my latitude, the wind would tear them apart sooner or later, and sunlight angles are too low on the horizon), nor the effects on watersheds and the environment of shading out that land.
They solar panels for the Chase regional bank in Columbus Ohio (13,000 employees) covers the parking lot-it supplies 85% of their power and with upgrades they hope to get it to 100%. Home Depot in CA has put solar panels on the roof of their stores.
But the big news is NREL found that the total amount of land needed by 2035 to achieve our clean power goals with wind, solar and long-distance transmission lines (19,700 sq. mi) would be:
equivalent to the land area currently occupied by railroads (18,500 sq. mi)
less than half the area of active oil and gas leases (40,500 sq. mi)
less than one-third of the area currently needed for ethanol production (59,500 sq. mi), and
only slightly more than the historically disturbed land area for coal mining (13,100 sq. mi).