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Originally Posted by Fuzz
They do show the massive scale of how difficult it is. I didn't realize there were chapters after the summary, I've been looking through. Chapter 3 shows graphs with yearly spending indicated, over what we spend now. The increases are staggering. For instance, solar needs to go form yearly spending of 115 to 237 billion a year for 30 years. So you can spend all that, but where do you put them? At some point you run out of places to build massive solar farms.
Same with wind Offshore spending needs to increase 10 fold, every year. Surely opportunity for offshore wind locations will be exhausted long before 30 years at a pace of 10x what we do now. Storage needs to increase 33x. Biofuel production by 43x. Sorry, but where are you growing these? Remember, that's per year additions for 30 years.
I'd be interested to see these numbers re-worked with the massive increase in nuclear. Nothing in this report feels achievable due to limits on space and reality. The dollar value is the most realistic part of it.
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Indeed. One source I found said 4% of the crop land is used for biofuel. Using 172% of our arable land for fuel doesn't seem sustainable to me.
At least solar the land can be low quality/desert. Productivity per acre will probably go up over time (bifacial panels, other tech improvements) as well.
But it does seem like nuclear (and improvements to nuclear) will need to be part of the solution here. It seems especially suited to co-gen applications.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0303133614.htm