Digging into this a bit, I may have gotten the original argument for nuclear wrong—it does seem like some countries would struggle to source their energy from renewables due to space constraints (arguably, less of a problem in Australia).
“I’m not even sure it’s physically possible with 100% renewables… if you were to try and just replace oil in a country like Korea or Japan, so a densely populated country without huge amounts of spare land, you have to take up a significant proportion of the entire nation with solar panels… In the UK… if you want to replace our oil consumption, you’d have to cover over one and a half times the size of Wales with solar just for oil; never mind about decarbonizing the electricity grid and all the rest of it.”—Mark Lynas on the 80,000 hours podcast
Thanks, I’ve found this helpful (if a little embarrassing)!
Digging into this a bit, I may have gotten the original argument for nuclear wrong—it does seem like some countries would struggle to source their energy from renewables due to space constraints (arguably, less of a problem in Australia).
“I’m not even sure it’s physically possible with 100% renewables… if you were to try and just replace oil in a country like Korea or Japan, so a densely populated country without huge amounts of spare land, you have to take up a significant proportion of the entire nation with solar panels… In the UK… if you want to replace our oil consumption, you’d have to cover over one and a half times the size of Wales with solar just for oil; never mind about decarbonizing the electricity grid and all the rest of it.”—Mark Lynas on the 80,000 hours podcast
Thanks, I’ve found this helpful (if a little embarrassing)!