According to a report by RealClearInvestigation, an investigatory group aligned with RealClear Media Group, which brings us the poll aggregators RealClearPolitics and several other watchdog groups, the Biden administration is vastly understating the amount of land that will be required in order to meet its unrealistic renewable energy goals.
The administration assures us that land usage for their climate goals will be paltry, a mere “less than one-half of one percent” of available land in the lower 48 states.
The line that the Department of Energy and some environmental activist groups are currently giving us is that the amount of land that will be needed to transition the United States into an all-renewable energy grid by 2035 is approximately 19,700 square miles. As a point of reference, railroads in the United States currently occupy approximately 18,500 square miles, active oil and gas leases occupy approximately 40,500 square miles, and the amount of land earmarked for ethanol production is a staggering 59,500 square miles.
Where does that relatively small estimate of land use come from? It appears to be the result of a National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) study, which claims that the land footprint needed to create all of this new “renewable” energy is comparable to today’s current fossil-fuel footprint — and maybe even a little less than that.
So, that 19,700 square miles doesn’t sound all that bad, considering. Unfortunately, the Biden administration appears to be living in a complete fantasy if the RealClearInvestigation report is to be believed. According to that investigation, the amount of land required for wind farms alone could be as high as 134,000 square miles.
And even that’s not the full story.
“Even that figure is misleading because it does not include land for the new transmission systems that would connect the energy, created by the solar panels carpeting the ground and skyscraper-tall wind turbines filling the horizons, to American businesses and homes,” states James Varney’s report.
And that’s just the wind farms. Solar farms and their transmission systems are not included.
“It’s hundreds of thousands of acres if not millions for transmissions alone,” said energy consultant David Blackmon. “The wind and solar farms will take enormous swaths of land all over the country and no one is talking about that.”
The land-use estimates from the Biden administration also neglect to account for the land to create a nationwide network of charging stations for electric vehicles, mines for the rare earth minerals involved with “renewable” technologies, and maintenance areas for the gigantic, high-tech windmills that will be needed to generate electricity — assuming the wind is blowing.
The amount of new land needed to accomplish the administration’s goals is staggering. According to some experts, we’re talking about the land area of several states.
“We’ll have to build as much new clean generation by 2035 as the total electricity produced by all sources today, then build the same amount again by 2050,” said Professor Jesse Jenkins from Princeton University. “This could ultimately require utility-scale solar projects that cover the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined, and wind farms that span an area equal to that of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.”
Some believe that the amount of land that will be required to meet Biden’s lofty emissions goals will eventually put an end to such a project ever being realized.
“Of course it will never happen,” said William Smith, a professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. “A lot more area is required.”
Even outlets friendly to the Biden climate agenda know that it will take far more land than the administration claims. The climate change-friendly Bloomberg News reported that “expanding wind and solar by 10% annually until 2030 would require a chunk of land equal to the state of South Dakota.” South Dakota alone is just over 77,000 square miles.
Bloomberg wasn’t done, estimating that meeting the 2050 emissions goals would require “up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean energy to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more.”
“No matter how you slice it, the NREL estimate is utter rubbish, but is 100% accepted since it toes the narrative line,” Smith said. “It is comforting until it is proven to fall drastically short by sad experience. Ten percent of that land, at least, is useless for other purposes. No one wants to live under, near, or in the line throw from a wind turbine in northern latitudes.”
Put it all together and it’s just one more falsehood that the climate cult portrays as fact. “Switching to 100 percent renewable energy is no big thing,” they claim. “It won’t even take up all that much space.”
But just remember, there’s always the possibility that it’s your space they’ll be trying to take. And they won’t care how long your family’s been there or where you’ll be forced to live. If they need it to make their net-zero dream come true, they will take it.
