http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/business/energy-environment/
29iht-sustain.html?pagewanted=all David MacKay’s book Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air features some helpful simplifications relating to energy use that make it easier to see the consequences of various energy choices such as wind power versus nuclear. In this article he compares the energy consumption per unit area of various countries (10 watts per square meter for Bahrain, 0.1 watts per square meter for South Africa, 0.01 for Botswana) to the amount of energy that different schemes can generate, per unit area (15-20 watts per square meter for solar, 11 watts for hydro, 2.5 for wind, 0.5 for energy crops) to make it easier to see how much land needs to be given over to energy production for each country to achieve energy self-sufficiency. 13:05
Entry Posted August 29, 2009
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… usually needs to be produced close to where it’s consumed, so the pressures on land use in densely populated areas could be enormous. A recent article in the New York Times comes at the issue from the opposite direction, estimating thearea needed for energy productionbased on the energy density of various types of renewable power technologies. It’s an interesting and readable article, so go read it, but the punchline is roughly similar to my analysis above: For illustration, imagine getting one-third of that energy from w …
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