Given the focus of the political establishment on “going green,” one would be excused for thinking that the changeover from traditional sources of electrical generation to new “renewable” sources, primarily wind and solar, would be conducted as efficiently as possible, and that government spending would pursue a methodology with the lowest overall costs in land acquisition, grid upgrades, human inconvenience, and damage to the environment the Climate Cult insists is their primary concern.
Let’s look at the numbers.
Background: In the U.S., we have approximately 82,000,000 single family homes. The average home size is about 2299 square feet, or 214 M2. If all these homes were single-story, we would have approximately 17.5 billion square meters of roof surface area. Nationwide, about 50 percent of these homes are single-story, cutting the overall roof area approximately in half, to 8.7 billion M2. And this doesn’t count the 47 million family units in multi-family housing, industrial roofs or acres of parking covered with solar panels generating electricity for the newer supermarkets and manufacturing facilities shading the cars of their customers while shopping or employees while working.
NASA tells us that, on average globally, the earth absorbs about 240 watts of solar power per square meter, more in Phoenix; less in Fargo – it’s an average.. Hundreds of watts per square meter times billions of square meters equals more power than we use today.
It seems clear that rooftop solar, alone, can supply all of our energy needs.
(Nuclear can, as well, with far fewer upset to interconnects and distribution, no contractors clogging our streets, and probably can do so far more quickly that retro-fitting all of our roofs. An added advantage of nuclear is that earth contains the necessary elements and minerals to get the job done, which cannot be said for solar and wind… but I digress.)
Don’t take my word for it. In 2021, PV Magazine, based on a study published by Nature Communications, noted,
The report further said that rooftops in the United States could host enough capacity to produce an annual 4.2 PWh [PetaWatt hours, thousands of TeraWatt hours] per year, effectively matching the nation’s current total energy output of about 4 PWh per year.
When discussing rooftop solar, several details must be considered that often are not in casual conversation. This study seems to have addressed these as part of their high-resolution study of rooftops:
They have generated statistical measures to generalize rooftop orientation, slope, and availability based on high-resolution LiDAR imagery.
So we aren’t pursuing rooftop solar as a national priority in our drive to “net-zero,” because..?
Biden’s recent “Inflation Reduction [sic] Act” provided $369 billion of “climate investment.” If this funding were directed to rooftop solar rather than expecting residents to fork over $30,000 of their own shrinking dollars, and adding actual “green jobs” for installation and interconnect, we could meet the nation’s electricity needs by utilizing land already developed and easily accessible, not cutting down millions of trees, not killing millions of (protected) migratory birds and bats, not killing thousands of (protected) desert tortoises, not pouring millions of tons of CO2-outgassing-concrete and not killing (protected) whales.
Of course, if this money were directed toward nuclear, the spending would be of even higher value to society.
But the establishment would not be able to turn off our power, limit our cars, ban our stoves, confiscate our air conditioners, confiscate our land, steal our money, kill all the cattle, tell us to eat bugs, or regulate where we live, and we ratepayers might save as much as $109B in fees by 2030, to help offset the Bidenflation caused, largely, by “green” policy.
Even if one foolishly believes in the hoax of Anthropogenic climate change, what we are doing makes no sense.
None of this is about the climate.