Thank you for the great, concise documentary on the 'rest of the story'. My local paper reprinted: The US Keeps Breaking Renewable Energy Records, Kyle Stock, Sept.9, 2025, BloombergNews.com. It leaves the average reader with the impression that the US is nearing 30 percent production from wind and solar. Blatant confusion between energy and capacity is rampant throughout the article. My question is how do we effectively address the vast gap in energy literacy across the country?
Here are some excerpts from the article (as it is behind a paywall):
"In April, as grid operators were girding for heat waves, nearly one-third of U.S. power was generated from renewable sources. And the green energy boom is spreading beyond the Sun and Wind belts. The New York grid hit a renewable record on June 24. New England recorded new highs for both wind and solar power this summer and the grid in the Mid-Atlantic states reported a record renewable harvest in late June."
"If all of the utility-owned solar panels in California were considered one facility, it would have ranked at the end of July as the second-largest power plant in the world. At noon on July 30, solar generation on the state’s CAISO grid hit 21.7 megawatts, second only to the capacity of the Three Gorges Dam on China’s Yangtze River."
For much of that day, the sun accounted for roughly two-thirds of the power Californians were using and the panels fed into batteries that, once the sun went down, juiced nearly one-third of the state."
"Good, cheap or fast? Typically, one only gets to choose two of those things. But now, solar, wind and other renewable sources are clicking all three of those boxes when it comes to producing electricity. So-called green energy is currently the lowest-cost and quickest-to-deploy power generator in the U.S., even without incentives, according to research from Lazard Inc."
Closing quote:Lazard Managing Director Samuel Scroggins, referring to where electrons originate. “Practically speaking, renewable energy is ready to build and it remains below the cost of alternatives.”
Thanks Robert, and other commenters. I, too, have watched prime farm and ranch land being covered with solar panels and wind turbines. My question is how do you convince the land owners not to sell or lease the land to the alternative energy developers? I see small 300-500 acre farms and ranches selling all over Texas because the young folks inheriting don't want to do the work required to keep them going. They take the money and never look back. Taking away the government subsidies to these alt companies might slow their ability to acquire more land, but that's a short-term solution. I wish I was smart enough to offer a long-term solution.
The latest IEA report on energy sources suggests that fossil fuels will continue to be a substantial part of the energy supply line for at least another century. Still well over 80%. The book, MORE AND MORE AND MORE - AN ALL-CONSUMING HISTORY OF ENERGY by Jean Baptiste-Fressoz’s helps to explain why more solar and wind does not necessarily lead to a reduction in fossil fuel powered sources of electricity. Countries like India and the African continent have a long way to go to catch up to the West’s per capita consumption of energy. If that ever happens, fossil fuels may well be a substantial portion of energy supplies well into the 2200s - unless a global nuclear war makes this all irrelevant.
If that’s true…why do Republicans want to export more LNG to China?? Do they want to destroy America by exporting natural gas to China that we will need in 20 years?? My guess is Big Fossil Fuel knows renewables will win out and so they want to make money on natural gas while it still has value. Saudi Arabia definitely believes oil could one day soon be worthless and so they better export it while it has value.
Solar has a place as a decentralized supplemental energy source on top of homes or maybe on top of structures in neighborhoods but the thought that you can run a country entirely on solar is foolish and ignores even the most fundamental technical facts !
The first problem is that solar only produces energy between 5 and 7 hours a day and the output is largely depending on the weather conditions , this means that you need storage but batteries need time to recharge so if you have a few bad weather days you run out of juice
Certainly I agree that productive farmland should not be lost to solar panels. Instead let’s use desert lands and rooftops and other opportunistic areas. But it is important to recognize just how much solar energy is out there.
On average, a solar panel with a typical efficiency of around 20% can produce 0.5 to 1.0 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per square meter per day. For our purposes let’s assume the low side of .5 kWh per square meter per day. In one year this will be 182.5 kWh in energy production. A square kilometer of panels would produce 182.5 million kWh in one year.
The total electricity consumption in the USA in 2022 was approximately 4 trillion kWh. 22,000 square kilometers of panels would generate 4.015 trillion kWh in one year. This is slightly less than the area of a square with sides 150km in length. The total area of the USA is over 9.3 million square kilometers. So, less than 0.24% of USA land covered in solar panels would provide all the electrical energy consumed by the USA. Obviously, intermittency would have to be managed. Batteries, hydrogen generated by electrolysis, pumped hydro, etc. can and do mitigate, but the overall management of the intermittency problem is another story.
105,218 square km of federal land is leased for oil and gas drilling, or 1.13% of USA land. Additionally 48,562 square km of ocean is leased for drilling.
Here's a more detailed breakdown of the electrical energy produced by a 1 square meter panel:
• Solar Panel Efficiency:
The efficiency of solar panels, which is the percentage of sunlight converted to electricity, is typically around 15-20% for residential systems, though some panels can reach 40-50% efficiency.
• Daily Energy Output:
A 1 square meter solar panel with 20% efficiency, exposed to full sunlight (1000 W/m2), can produce roughly 200 watts of power.
• Factors Affecting Output:
The actual energy output depends on several factors, including:
• Location: Areas with more sunlight hours will produce more energy.
• Time of Year: Summer months generally have more sunlight hours than winter months.
• Panel Technology: Different panel technologies have varying efficiencies.
• Panel Orientation and Tilt: Optimizing panel orientation and tilt angle can maximize sunlight capture.
• To convert to kWh, consider peak sun hours: If a panel receives 5 hours of peak sunlight per day, the daily output would be 200 Watts * 5 hours = 1000 Watt-hours or 1 kWh.
Douglas, you are right of course, there are certainly environmental impacts to consider. But, solar panels last a long time with little maintenance required. Many manufacturers offer 20 year, 25 year, or longer guarantees, e.g. Panasonic, you can check them out. At end of life around 80-90% of a solar panel *can* be recycled. This includes 20-25% silicon and other metals like silver and aluminum, 75% glass, and small parts of interlayer materials. However, there’s still a percentage that ends up as waste. Whether the potential recycling happens is till TBD, most panels produced are still in use. It's early in the life of this industry...
So how do we know that today’s solution isn’t tomorrow’s problem? Unfortunately, that appears to be the case with so much that was originally welcomed with great enthusiasm. E.g. plastics, motor vehicles, etc. I have people advocating for EVs. The Chairperson of Western Mining has publicly stated that the move to an electricity based energy system will be very material intensive - hence the need for rigorous Life Cycle Analysis - and, in addition EVs are NOT carbon neutral. I guess given that we are dealing with a global issue, it is unlikely that any of these issues will be resolved in our life time. Vaclav Smil suggests this transition is a century long process, unless, of course the unintended consequences reveal flawed premises in the process which will leave us where?
Douglas, those are important questions borne of great observations. I don't think there are incontrovertible answers now. We'll learn more as we go on.
Douglas, the efficiency is a measure of the panel's operational efficiency, how much of the solar energy that strikes the panel is converted to electrical energy. The location certainly affects how much solar energy strikes the panel and thus how much electrical energy is produced and is factored in by an estimate of 5 hours sunlight per day. As you point out, land in the Sahara receives more sunlight than other areas. However the southwest U.S. receives quite a bit of sunlight, more than 5 hours per day. High end commercial panels have efficiencies of 22-23%. There are even panels today with efficiency of 40%. The evolution of solar panel efficiency over time is a testament to human innovation and technological progress. Since the inception of solar panels in the 1950s, photovoltaic efficiency over time has shown remarkable improvement from about 6% in the early days to 20+% today. It is likely to further improve as there is a lot of incentive and money in the industry.
Douglas, that the current global average efficiency on installed base of varying ages is less than 20% may be true, I wouldn't dispute it. But that is certainly an estimate and not relevant to the calculations, which are projective. When current technology available for purchase is providing better than 20%, why would anyone use less?
Hmmmm so for avg reader like me the two important points here are “less than 0.24% of USA land covered in solar panels would provide all the electrical energy consumed by the USA” and more than 0.24% of USA land is leased out for oil and gas drilling….these are true?
The area leased for oil and gas drilling is public record, you can look it up. Regarding the amount of land required for solar panels to power the U.S. you can do the research and the arithmetic like I did. Another person who has reached the same conclusion - https://youtube.com/shorts/hYH851DjMz4?si=vCfc6__Bl0t1jad6
Follow the passages in my novel (based on reality) with the character Ian MacAllister in them. Search by treaty/treaties to see how powers play the global game (including solar mandates, triggered by treaties, International agreements, tax credits, not local initiatives). https://thedarksideofhungermountain.substack.com/ I think you'll find the info useful. Best, T.H. PLATT
Robert, I have tried to raise the issue of Life Cycle Assessment of solar and wind, as well as gas, coal, nuclear and hydro. There are ISO standards for such assessments but noone wants to talk about it. If solar has a life of 20-25 years and wind somewhere between 15-25 years, what does a Life Cycle Analysis say about the environmnetal cost of solar and wind? If the world went to solar as the sole source of power and used energy at the same levels per capita as here in Australia, we would have somewhere between 100 and 150 cubic kilometres of solar panels to deal with at the end of life EVERY YEAR!!!!
The blackland prarie, an area that suffers extreme, cyclical droughts, is a vast area of dryland farming in central Texas. The farming here is very dependent on rainfall for crops like sorgum, milo, cotton and pasturing. Weather here is variable in the extreme; prolonged drought, extreme rain events, and occasional good, successful years of dryland darming.
Solar farms are only one of the consumers of large land tracts, the high concentration of tract housing and residential development in central Texas consumes far more land. Hiighway infrastructure berween San Antonio and Dallas-Ft Worth has promoted the paving over of numerous acres of land that was once farmed.
Notable, throughout the United States is poor planning practices and lack of stringent development regulations governing land use relative to agriculture.
The position promoted in this piece is decidedly pro fossil fuel and fails to recofnize carbon impact on climate.
Stringent regs refers to regs already on the books, but are conveniently ignored; for ex: Mystic Summer Camp in Kerrville. We need better urban and environmental planning across the country to stop sprawl, which is present in spades in central Texas.
The power output relative to land use for solar compared to the nearby coal plant is staggering! And this is in Texas, with extensive sunshine. I am sure the relative numbers are even more lopsided in Dunkelflaute-plauged Europe
For the economy and for the environment, we should pause most solar and wind, focus on natural gas and advanced nuclear. Solar and wind and the transmission needed are destroying rural America. The environmental groups treat the nonurban areas as collateral damage in their goal of zero net. Solar and wind do not pay living wages. Gas, coal and nuclear do. In Colorado the environmental groups and renewable industry passed SB 21-020 which reduces substantially property taxes that local communities used to get. It is a travesty
Follow the money
Thank you for the great, concise documentary on the 'rest of the story'. My local paper reprinted: The US Keeps Breaking Renewable Energy Records, Kyle Stock, Sept.9, 2025, BloombergNews.com. It leaves the average reader with the impression that the US is nearing 30 percent production from wind and solar. Blatant confusion between energy and capacity is rampant throughout the article. My question is how do we effectively address the vast gap in energy literacy across the country?
Here are some excerpts from the article (as it is behind a paywall):
"In April, as grid operators were girding for heat waves, nearly one-third of U.S. power was generated from renewable sources. And the green energy boom is spreading beyond the Sun and Wind belts. The New York grid hit a renewable record on June 24. New England recorded new highs for both wind and solar power this summer and the grid in the Mid-Atlantic states reported a record renewable harvest in late June."
"If all of the utility-owned solar panels in California were considered one facility, it would have ranked at the end of July as the second-largest power plant in the world. At noon on July 30, solar generation on the state’s CAISO grid hit 21.7 megawatts, second only to the capacity of the Three Gorges Dam on China’s Yangtze River."
For much of that day, the sun accounted for roughly two-thirds of the power Californians were using and the panels fed into batteries that, once the sun went down, juiced nearly one-third of the state."
"Good, cheap or fast? Typically, one only gets to choose two of those things. But now, solar, wind and other renewable sources are clicking all three of those boxes when it comes to producing electricity. So-called green energy is currently the lowest-cost and quickest-to-deploy power generator in the U.S., even without incentives, according to research from Lazard Inc."
Closing quote:Lazard Managing Director Samuel Scroggins, referring to where electrons originate. “Practically speaking, renewable energy is ready to build and it remains below the cost of alternatives.”
Thanks Robert, and other commenters. I, too, have watched prime farm and ranch land being covered with solar panels and wind turbines. My question is how do you convince the land owners not to sell or lease the land to the alternative energy developers? I see small 300-500 acre farms and ranches selling all over Texas because the young folks inheriting don't want to do the work required to keep them going. They take the money and never look back. Taking away the government subsidies to these alt companies might slow their ability to acquire more land, but that's a short-term solution. I wish I was smart enough to offer a long-term solution.
The latest IEA report on energy sources suggests that fossil fuels will continue to be a substantial part of the energy supply line for at least another century. Still well over 80%. The book, MORE AND MORE AND MORE - AN ALL-CONSUMING HISTORY OF ENERGY by Jean Baptiste-Fressoz’s helps to explain why more solar and wind does not necessarily lead to a reduction in fossil fuel powered sources of electricity. Countries like India and the African continent have a long way to go to catch up to the West’s per capita consumption of energy. If that ever happens, fossil fuels may well be a substantial portion of energy supplies well into the 2200s - unless a global nuclear war makes this all irrelevant.
If that’s true…why do Republicans want to export more LNG to China?? Do they want to destroy America by exporting natural gas to China that we will need in 20 years?? My guess is Big Fossil Fuel knows renewables will win out and so they want to make money on natural gas while it still has value. Saudi Arabia definitely believes oil could one day soon be worthless and so they better export it while it has value.
Solar has a place as a decentralized supplemental energy source on top of homes or maybe on top of structures in neighborhoods but the thought that you can run a country entirely on solar is foolish and ignores even the most fundamental technical facts !
The first problem is that solar only produces energy between 5 and 7 hours a day and the output is largely depending on the weather conditions , this means that you need storage but batteries need time to recharge so if you have a few bad weather days you run out of juice
The biggest problem is that as acerage used for food production shrinks food prices will inevitably rise !
Certainly I agree that productive farmland should not be lost to solar panels. Instead let’s use desert lands and rooftops and other opportunistic areas. But it is important to recognize just how much solar energy is out there.
On average, a solar panel with a typical efficiency of around 20% can produce 0.5 to 1.0 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per square meter per day. For our purposes let’s assume the low side of .5 kWh per square meter per day. In one year this will be 182.5 kWh in energy production. A square kilometer of panels would produce 182.5 million kWh in one year.
The total electricity consumption in the USA in 2022 was approximately 4 trillion kWh. 22,000 square kilometers of panels would generate 4.015 trillion kWh in one year. This is slightly less than the area of a square with sides 150km in length. The total area of the USA is over 9.3 million square kilometers. So, less than 0.24% of USA land covered in solar panels would provide all the electrical energy consumed by the USA. Obviously, intermittency would have to be managed. Batteries, hydrogen generated by electrolysis, pumped hydro, etc. can and do mitigate, but the overall management of the intermittency problem is another story.
105,218 square km of federal land is leased for oil and gas drilling, or 1.13% of USA land. Additionally 48,562 square km of ocean is leased for drilling.
Here's a more detailed breakdown of the electrical energy produced by a 1 square meter panel:
• Solar Panel Efficiency:
The efficiency of solar panels, which is the percentage of sunlight converted to electricity, is typically around 15-20% for residential systems, though some panels can reach 40-50% efficiency.
• Daily Energy Output:
A 1 square meter solar panel with 20% efficiency, exposed to full sunlight (1000 W/m2), can produce roughly 200 watts of power.
• Factors Affecting Output:
The actual energy output depends on several factors, including:
• Location: Areas with more sunlight hours will produce more energy.
• Time of Year: Summer months generally have more sunlight hours than winter months.
• Panel Technology: Different panel technologies have varying efficiencies.
• Panel Orientation and Tilt: Optimizing panel orientation and tilt angle can maximize sunlight capture.
• Example Calculation:
• Panel Area: 1 square meter
• Efficiency: 20%
• Sunlight: 1000 W/m2
• Daily Output: 1 m2 * 0.20 * 1000 W/m2 = 200 Watts
• To convert to kWh, consider peak sun hours: If a panel receives 5 hours of peak sunlight per day, the daily output would be 200 Watts * 5 hours = 1000 Watt-hours or 1 kWh.
Reliability and resiliency factors in prominently.
The figure is closer to 12 to 15 % not 20% unless you live in the Sahara.
According to the IEA, SOLAR ACCOUNTS FOR APPROX. 5% of gobal energy. Solar is very material intensive with all the attendant environmental impacts.
Douglas, you are right of course, there are certainly environmental impacts to consider. But, solar panels last a long time with little maintenance required. Many manufacturers offer 20 year, 25 year, or longer guarantees, e.g. Panasonic, you can check them out. At end of life around 80-90% of a solar panel *can* be recycled. This includes 20-25% silicon and other metals like silver and aluminum, 75% glass, and small parts of interlayer materials. However, there’s still a percentage that ends up as waste. Whether the potential recycling happens is till TBD, most panels produced are still in use. It's early in the life of this industry...
So how do we know that today’s solution isn’t tomorrow’s problem? Unfortunately, that appears to be the case with so much that was originally welcomed with great enthusiasm. E.g. plastics, motor vehicles, etc. I have people advocating for EVs. The Chairperson of Western Mining has publicly stated that the move to an electricity based energy system will be very material intensive - hence the need for rigorous Life Cycle Analysis - and, in addition EVs are NOT carbon neutral. I guess given that we are dealing with a global issue, it is unlikely that any of these issues will be resolved in our life time. Vaclav Smil suggests this transition is a century long process, unless, of course the unintended consequences reveal flawed premises in the process which will leave us where?
Douglas, those are important questions borne of great observations. I don't think there are incontrovertible answers now. We'll learn more as we go on.
Douglas, the efficiency is a measure of the panel's operational efficiency, how much of the solar energy that strikes the panel is converted to electrical energy. The location certainly affects how much solar energy strikes the panel and thus how much electrical energy is produced and is factored in by an estimate of 5 hours sunlight per day. As you point out, land in the Sahara receives more sunlight than other areas. However the southwest U.S. receives quite a bit of sunlight, more than 5 hours per day. High end commercial panels have efficiencies of 22-23%. There are even panels today with efficiency of 40%. The evolution of solar panel efficiency over time is a testament to human innovation and technological progress. Since the inception of solar panels in the 1950s, photovoltaic efficiency over time has shown remarkable improvement from about 6% in the early days to 20+% today. It is likely to further improve as there is a lot of incentive and money in the industry.
It is not 20% as a global epaverage according to the IEA
Douglas, that the current global average efficiency on installed base of varying ages is less than 20% may be true, I wouldn't dispute it. But that is certainly an estimate and not relevant to the calculations, which are projective. When current technology available for purchase is providing better than 20%, why would anyone use less?
Agreed
Hmmmm so for avg reader like me the two important points here are “less than 0.24% of USA land covered in solar panels would provide all the electrical energy consumed by the USA” and more than 0.24% of USA land is leased out for oil and gas drilling….these are true?
The area leased for oil and gas drilling is public record, you can look it up. Regarding the amount of land required for solar panels to power the U.S. you can do the research and the arithmetic like I did. Another person who has reached the same conclusion - https://youtube.com/shorts/hYH851DjMz4?si=vCfc6__Bl0t1jad6
You can't eat solar panels or wind turbines.
Thank you! Very good documentary.
Thanks very much. We did our best.
Follow the passages in my novel (based on reality) with the character Ian MacAllister in them. Search by treaty/treaties to see how powers play the global game (including solar mandates, triggered by treaties, International agreements, tax credits, not local initiatives). https://thedarksideofhungermountain.substack.com/ I think you'll find the info useful. Best, T.H. PLATT
Robert, I have tried to raise the issue of Life Cycle Assessment of solar and wind, as well as gas, coal, nuclear and hydro. There are ISO standards for such assessments but noone wants to talk about it. If solar has a life of 20-25 years and wind somewhere between 15-25 years, what does a Life Cycle Analysis say about the environmnetal cost of solar and wind? If the world went to solar as the sole source of power and used energy at the same levels per capita as here in Australia, we would have somewhere between 100 and 150 cubic kilometres of solar panels to deal with at the end of life EVERY YEAR!!!!
The blackland prarie, an area that suffers extreme, cyclical droughts, is a vast area of dryland farming in central Texas. The farming here is very dependent on rainfall for crops like sorgum, milo, cotton and pasturing. Weather here is variable in the extreme; prolonged drought, extreme rain events, and occasional good, successful years of dryland darming.
Solar farms are only one of the consumers of large land tracts, the high concentration of tract housing and residential development in central Texas consumes far more land. Hiighway infrastructure berween San Antonio and Dallas-Ft Worth has promoted the paving over of numerous acres of land that was once farmed.
Notable, throughout the United States is poor planning practices and lack of stringent development regulations governing land use relative to agriculture.
The position promoted in this piece is decidedly pro fossil fuel and fails to recofnize carbon impact on climate.
Lost me at wanting stringent regulations
Stringent regs refers to regs already on the books, but are conveniently ignored; for ex: Mystic Summer Camp in Kerrville. We need better urban and environmental planning across the country to stop sprawl, which is present in spades in central Texas.
Save on wires and poles and put those panels on all the roofs of all the houses and buildings. Also, put small wind turbines for backup.
The power output relative to land use for solar compared to the nearby coal plant is staggering! And this is in Texas, with extensive sunshine. I am sure the relative numbers are even more lopsided in Dunkelflaute-plauged Europe
For the economy and for the environment, we should pause most solar and wind, focus on natural gas and advanced nuclear. Solar and wind and the transmission needed are destroying rural America. The environmental groups treat the nonurban areas as collateral damage in their goal of zero net. Solar and wind do not pay living wages. Gas, coal and nuclear do. In Colorado the environmental groups and renewable industry passed SB 21-020 which reduces substantially property taxes that local communities used to get. It is a travesty
Put them on all the roofs in America and save on infrastructure and power outages.
So the government should erode another man's property rights for his convenience? So much for defending individualism and western civilization.
As I'm sure you know, property rights are not absolute. You don't have the right to use your property in ways that will harm your neighbors' property.
"I don't like how this looks" is now considered harm? What's next? The government telling me what haircut I could get?