Raphael ThysPhoto by American Public Power Association on Unsplash
Every now and then, I get into arguments on Twitter with climate change deniers who claim that renewable energy won’t save the environment, but instead destroy it and drive rampant poverty and inhumane working conditions in the process. They maintain, without sources, that renewables will use too much land area, require too much damaging mining, and increase our water usage to such a level, that it is actually better for the planet and ourselves to carry on using fossil fuels. If we ignore the fact that oil reserves will run out in less than 50 years, making their whole argument a moot point, is there a shred of truth to their view? After all, misinformation tends to originate from twisting and misrepresenting facts. Well, luckily, a recent report answers this very question.
The report comes from the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC), which is a world-renowned international think tank, focusing on economic growth and climate change mitigation. Their latest report, “Material and Resource Requirements for the Energy Transition”, looked into the natural resources and materials needed to meet the needs of the energy transition and found some rather shocking results. Overall, they found that a global clean energy system would require 10% more water usage and just over twice the land area used by current fossil fuels.
That might sound like a lot of land, but let’s put it into context. Currently, the fossil fuel industry uses 0.4 million square km of land area with drilling sites, refineries, distribution centres and pipelines. Which is equivalent to a little less than the land area of Iraq. A global clean energy infrastructure would use around 1.1 million square km, which would consist mainly of onshore wind and solar farms, but it also takes into account mines and factories used to supply the renewable industry. That is about the same land area as Ethiopia, or twice that of Spain. To put it another way, powering all of humanity with renewable energy would only take up 1% of the Earth’s land area. But these land uses aren’t the same. Nature can’t thrive around oil refineries, drill sites or distribution centres. But many different species can thrive around solar and…