by Meredith Poor

“Solar farms need huge tracts of land to operate at scale, and there is often fierce competition for those parcels, driving up prices for solar developers”….

Dividing the population of the US by 2.5 persons per household yields 133 million households in the US. Multiplying 133 million by 6000 square feet (the size of an average suburban plot of land) yields essentially 800 billion square feet occupied by a single family home ‘primary residence’. This does not account for high-rise multifamily living or space used for streets, schools, businesses, etc. but it helps bring land use into perspective.

A square mile is 5280 x 5280 feet, or roughly 28 million square feet. Dividing 800,000,000,000 by 28,000,000 yields around 28,600 square miles. A ‘standard’ county is about 40 miles by 40 miles, or 1600 square miles, however most counties don’t quite get that large. Dividing 28,600 by 1600 square miles yields slightly less than 18 counties. Taking the square root of 28,600 yields a distance of roughly 170 miles. Therefore a square 170 miles by 170 miles within the US would be enough to house everyone living in the country. The ‘lower 48 states’ is roughly 3000 miles east to west times 1500 miles north to south, or about 4,500,000 square miles. Texas alone is roughly 800 miles x 800 miles.

More than one million square miles of land in the United States is used for either cattle pasture or growing forage for livestock (soybeans, alfalfa, hay, etc.). The combination of ‘lab grown meat’ (meaning meat equivalent cultured in vats), ‘milk’ produced by microorganisms, and leather substitute cultured from bacteria puts livestock on the list of industries targeted for downsizing. All of this already exists – none of it is speculative.

If the typical home allocates 500 square feet per resident, then the ‘average’ home is 1250 square feet. Each resident needs about 30Kwh of electricity per day, which translates into 6000 watts of solar panels, or roughly 300 square feet (6000 watts x 5 hours = 30Kwh). Therefore, the home should have 750 square feet of panels. In the bigger picture, this means that the area used by panels is less than the area occupied by the resident within the home, not to mention the area of the housing lot.

The biggest ‘waste of space’ in urban areas is parking lots. Other bits of urban real estate that might be attractive for covering with solar panels are drainage ditches and/or power line right of ways. In rainier areas land is set aside for retention ponds, which could also be covered. This is before any discussion of abandoned houses or ‘second homes’ used by snow birds, etc.

The US has plenty of room for panels. These panels could be situated entirely within urban areas and still be adequate to power the entire country. However, the ‘best use’ is, most likely, in conjunction with agriculture, since it has been demonstrated repeatedly that solar panels actually enhance agricultural productivity.