WASHINGTON DC – Critics of wind and solar routinely raise concerns about how much land would be required to decarbonize the US power sector. Fortunately, the answer is relatively little.
A recent National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) study shows that it would take less than 1 percent of the land in the Lower 48—that’s an area comparable to or even smaller than the fossil fuel industry’s current footprint.
And when wind and solar projects are responsibly sited, the environmental and public health impacts would be far less harmful than those from extracting, producing and burning fossil fuels.
The fact that renewables will not require an inordinate amount of land is welcome news because limiting climate change’s worst impacts will require us to cut global heat-trapping emissions roughly in half by 2030 and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Acknowledging that the United States is a leading contributor to carbon emissions, the Biden administration has committed to cutting US emissions 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Most studies show that achieving these targets will require an unprecedented increase in wind and solar power to decarbonize the power sector and meet the increased demand for zero- carbon electricity to replace fossil fuels in building, industrial and transportation sectors.
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