Solar panels are more economically productive than any unused land, forestry, or agriculture, and even some land uses in built up areas, such as car parking. What this means is that deploying solar upgrades utility.
There is a question whether there is enough land. The short answer is yes, easily, it’s not even close. Something like 4-5% of Earth’s land surface with solar can provide enough energy for 10 billion people to live at current US levels of energy consumption, and more than 35% of Earth’s land surface is essentially uninhabited deserts, mountains, swamps, forests, etc.
The longer answer is that we can provide the food needs of our civilization with about 20% of Earth’s land surface area under more-or-less intense cultivation, our civilization consumes roughly 100x more energy in the form of electricity, oil and gas, than food, and solar energy is about 1000x more productive, per unit area, than plants.
Strictly speaking, Kardashev Level 1 would require the entire surface, land and water, of Earth to be paved with solar. This is not particularly desirable nor necessary, in my opinion!
Casey Handmer
Karma: 24
All forms of energy have all kinds of subsidies, and Nuclear probably more than any other on a “per kWh generated” basis.
Nuclear fission is awesome technology but will it be able to compete with solar on price—seems unlikely to me.