The square km the US uses to grow corn for ethanol is about ~~ 1/3rd the total global area required for solar in this article. Ethanol that is a gigantic waste of resources.
They seem like big numbers until you compare it with the enormity of what we already do.
Yes, and the corn-based ethanol here is used for "feeding cars" that have combustion engines, i.e. it's already used exactly for energy production. The most recent Technology Connections video[1] quoted some numbers on this. All this land dedicated to disposable energy production could be dedicated to renewable energy production instead.
A long article, about rising prices driven by fossil fuel costs but also a lot of positivity as you read towards the end and a sudden sharp downturn that’s coming to Australias power prices. Australia’s wholesale power prices halved in q4 2025 due to massive solar and battery investment that on a per capita basis dwarfs china. Australia is now over 50% renewables. It’s set to accelerate too.
> The typical golf course covers about a square kilometer. We have 40,000 of them around the world being meticulously maintained. If the same could be said for solar farms we would be almost 10% of the way there.
To me, it's one of many ways in which markets fail to allocate resources to the most pressing problems.
I don't think its lack of land that is preventing 10% of our energy coming from solar. Do you really believe that without golf courses there, the land would be used for solar instead?
> Individuals don’t demand solutions to diffuse problems
Markets solve diffuse problems really well, people signal how much their section of the problem is worth solving and the market judges whether the overall problem can be solved cost effectively. Getting food to everyone is a diffuse problem for example.
Tragedy of the commons is different. Markets don't solve how to solve owning things in common and the usual market recommendation is not to do that.
There is no magic hand, only a Tragedy of the Commons and greedy individuals doing whatever. (Federally, there is at present time little-to-no prosecution of fraudsters or tax cheats. Economically, it's basically The Purge.)
Appropriate regulations and enforcement is what is missing but ⅔ of country is brainwashed by billionaires and Fox News that "gubberment bad" and "regulations are communism".
The biggest impediment to clean energy, which is actually cheaper than fossil fuels, is politics. We have political interference at the highest level to impede solar, storage, and wind.
In the US, residential solar is 5x-6x more expensive than in Australia per W, i.e. on identical system costs, not on what's generated. And they pay their labor better than we do in the US at the same time. It's because of a lot of regulatory and utility interference, and a laundry list of other things:
This is the headline from a non-partisan energy media outlet when it comes to wind: "
How Trump dismantled a promising energy industry — and what America lost---The demolition of the offshore wind sector in 2025 will reverberate for decades, resulting in lost jobs, higher utility bills, and less reliable power grids."
And when it comes to batteries, people that don't care about the effects of mining or oil extraction or toxicity of gasoline all of a sudden start to get all worked up about supposedly "toxic" lithium batteries, because they've consumed a ton of propaganda on the matter, and no facts. People also seem to think that we somehow burn lithium, instead of mine it once, and use a tiny amount (dozens of pounds) to power an entire car, which can then be recycled.
And I can't tell you how many times I've been told that we can't do solar because it takes "too much land" or "physics" by people that pretend to be good with numbers but have never figured out how to calculate the actual requirementns by solar...
This is a US-specific comment, but the rest of the world is not as foolish and is plowing full-steam ahead to a world of ever decreasing energy costs because they are not stopping the progress of better technology.
The square km the US uses to grow corn for ethanol is about ~~ 1/3rd the total global area required for solar in this article. Ethanol that is a gigantic waste of resources.
They seem like big numbers until you compare it with the enormity of what we already do.
Yes, and the corn-based ethanol here is used for "feeding cars" that have combustion engines, i.e. it's already used exactly for energy production. The most recent Technology Connections video[1] quoted some numbers on this. All this land dedicated to disposable energy production could be dedicated to renewable energy production instead.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM
Yep. 5% of all US land is dedicated to just growing subsidized corn.
what’s the current, cumulative size of all housing, private home, apartments building roof surface ?
A long article, about rising prices driven by fossil fuel costs but also a lot of positivity as you read towards the end and a sudden sharp downturn that’s coming to Australias power prices. Australia’s wholesale power prices halved in q4 2025 due to massive solar and battery investment that on a per capita basis dwarfs china. Australia is now over 50% renewables. It’s set to accelerate too.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-08/big-swings-in-austral...
So at least one continent in this picture is making great progress to achieving this.
> wholesale power prices halved
Who cares?
No one pays the wholesale price.
What price does the retail customer pay?
Retail prices obscure the underlying economics via taxes and subsidies.
Here the wholesale prices are far more relevant economically.
I felt this was telling:
> The typical golf course covers about a square kilometer. We have 40,000 of them around the world being meticulously maintained. If the same could be said for solar farms we would be almost 10% of the way there.
To me, it's one of many ways in which markets fail to allocate resources to the most pressing problems.
I don't think its lack of land that is preventing 10% of our energy coming from solar. Do you really believe that without golf courses there, the land would be used for solar instead?
Markets allocate resources based on supply and demand. Individuals don’t demand solutions to diffuse problems. It’s tragedy of the commons every time.
> Individuals don’t demand solutions to diffuse problems
Markets solve diffuse problems really well, people signal how much their section of the problem is worth solving and the market judges whether the overall problem can be solved cost effectively. Getting food to everyone is a diffuse problem for example.
Tragedy of the commons is different. Markets don't solve how to solve owning things in common and the usual market recommendation is not to do that.
How much money does a golf course bring in yearly? How onerous are the regulations?
How much money would a solar farm bring in yearly? How onerous would the regulations be?
Nice expression, but the book by the same name is fatally flawed in its science.
There is no magic hand, only a Tragedy of the Commons and greedy individuals doing whatever. (Federally, there is at present time little-to-no prosecution of fraudsters or tax cheats. Economically, it's basically The Purge.)
Appropriate regulations and enforcement is what is missing but ⅔ of country is brainwashed by billionaires and Fox News that "gubberment bad" and "regulations are communism".
Land is cheap, so why not golf courses?
There’s an updated article as of Aug 2021 too: https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/77565
Nitpick: if you’re trying to illustrate sizes of things, you should use an equal-area map projection.
The Southern Ocean wind installation is to the right scale or not?
It seems that a project like this would require more cooperation -
https://aeon.co/essays/we-cooperate-to-survive-but-if-no-one...
But cooperation only occurs when the entire group is at risk, that isn’t the case currently.
Too bad most people don't live close to those specific areas.
The biggest impediment to clean energy, which is actually cheaper than fossil fuels, is politics. We have political interference at the highest level to impede solar, storage, and wind.
In the US, residential solar is 5x-6x more expensive than in Australia per W, i.e. on identical system costs, not on what's generated. And they pay their labor better than we do in the US at the same time. It's because of a lot of regulatory and utility interference, and a laundry list of other things:
https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-real-story-with-australian
This is the headline from a non-partisan energy media outlet when it comes to wind: " How Trump dismantled a promising energy industry — and what America lost---The demolition of the offshore wind sector in 2025 will reverberate for decades, resulting in lost jobs, higher utility bills, and less reliable power grids."
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/offshore-wind/how-trump...
And when it comes to batteries, people that don't care about the effects of mining or oil extraction or toxicity of gasoline all of a sudden start to get all worked up about supposedly "toxic" lithium batteries, because they've consumed a ton of propaganda on the matter, and no facts. People also seem to think that we somehow burn lithium, instead of mine it once, and use a tiny amount (dozens of pounds) to power an entire car, which can then be recycled.
And I can't tell you how many times I've been told that we can't do solar because it takes "too much land" or "physics" by people that pretend to be good with numbers but have never figured out how to calculate the actual requirementns by solar...
This is a US-specific comment, but the rest of the world is not as foolish and is plowing full-steam ahead to a world of ever decreasing energy costs because they are not stopping the progress of better technology.
I’ll just leave this here for those who have some time to watch: https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?si=MBVdiOpSdgmGaar5