According to the United Nations 170,000 square kilometres of forest is destroyed each year. If we constructed solar farms at the same rate, we would be finished in 3 years.

How little land is required to power the world with solar

Using some everyday math and artistic talent, the folks at Land Art Generator Initiative have put together some maps depicting how much physical space would actually be required to power the world energy requirements—all 678,000,000,000,000,000 Btus of energy worth—using only wind and solar energy. The results are quite encouraging, indeed.

As you can see from these visual representations of where and how wind and solar power could be generated, it’s obvious that the amount of land required would actually be very small. The US, for instance, would need approximately 1,000 solar “supersites” measuring about 10 square km (about 6.2 square miles) to generate enough solar energy for the entire country.

Compared to the amount of space required for the American highway system—94,000 square kilometres, or 58,400 square miles, and those highways were constructed in a space of 35 years.

Harvesting wind for the world’s energy needs

 

The numbers for wind energy are equally as impressive:

A 5 MW turbine can be expected to produce 17 GWh per year (they are 40% effective from their peak rated capacity – 5 MW x 365 x 24 = 43.8 GWh). Therefore, it would require 11,748,294 of the 5 MW capacity turbines to create the same yearly output. There are 500 million cars in the world so it’s not like that’s an unattainable goal from a manufacturing standpoint. And each 5 MW turbine is a 30 year lifespan money making machine for whoever buys it. The same can not be said for my car. But if we can build 90,000 Cape Wind size installations, we would be there on wind alone. Based on that installation, each turbine requires 1/2 square mile of area for offshore sites. This would require 5.85 million square kilometers for 2030 world energy needs.