Fact Check – 100% New Energy Saves Land

How 100% renewable energy will use much less of California's land than fossil fuels

Mark Z. Jacobson, et. al., August 24,2018 (LA Times)

…Senate Bill 100 would transition California to 100% zero-carbon, effectively renewable electricity by 2045. Our studies provide a way to do this for all energy, including electricity…[Claims by Robert Bryce, from the Koch family- and Exxon Mobil-funded Manhattan Institute, are completely wrong that such efforts] would ‘require wrecking vast onshore and offshore territories with forests of wind turbines and sprawling solar project’…

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The fossil fuel footprint in California is 1.6% of the state’s land area…Our solar plan footprint is only 39% of the land taken up by fossil fuels. Bryce claims our onshore wind needs 16,000 square miles based on his use of three megawatts generated per square kilometer of land. However, wind land is not “footprint.” It is mostly open space that also can be used for agriculture, rangeland, wildlife or solar; thus, the same land can be used for two energy sources…Using a conservative estimate of average energy density yields 3,000 square miles of space for wind power, not 16,000…” click here for more

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