21–30 of 116 posts
"A new climate-modeling study finds that a massive wind and solar installation in the Sahara Desert and neighboring Sahel would increase local temperature, precipitation and vegetation. Overall, the researchers report, the effects would likely benefit the region." Beneficial to who or what? Beneficial in what ways?
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If countries like China, India, Malaysia, Nigeria etc. start to have per-capita energy use close to that of the United States, global energy consumption could easily double or triple even without any increase in population. I said "if", but I really should say "when", because this is what's expected to happen as these countries modernize and start getting things like air conditioning on the same scale as US household…
Almost no one in Europe has per-capita energy use anywhere close to the US, so why would China? And I don't think it's just that we have less AC, though that's surely the strongest contributor.
"A new climate-modeling study finds that a massive wind and solar installation in the Sahara Desert and neighboring Sahel would increase local temperature, precipitation and vegetation. Overall, the researchers report, the effects would likely benefit the region." Beneficial to who or what? Beneficial in what ways?
You can continue reading the article to learn the answers, you know.
What they do not model is the local effect of the cities that will need to be built to service all these panels. 9,000,000 square KM is a gigantic area. Millions of people will be needed to maintain these farms. Those people will need to either live locally or be transported regularly. The study should model how the presence of those people in such a relatively underpopulated area will impact local climate. 1 person…
Solar utility installations in California that I’m familiar with employ fewer than 1 person per square km.
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You can continue reading the article to learn the answers, you know.
Sorry, I think the point I was trying to make was, do we really want to transform this unique geography? I live in Utah and if someone came here and said, "you know all this red rock and sand in the south, we could change that into a lush green landscape," there'd be massive opposition to that idea.
https://www.livescience.com/62168-sahara-desert-expanding.ht...
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Solar utility installations in California that I’m familiar with employ fewer than 1 person per square km.
And how do they keep all those panels clean? Who maintains the transformers when they break? Who swaps out the panels as they reach their life expectancy? It isn't just the night watchman, but the entire community of people involved in any large outdoor installation.
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Generating terawatts is not unreasonable. But transportation of it out of North Africa would be almost as big an effort as building the solar farms in question.
How would you go about it? Lots of high-voltage lines, or is there something else that'd make more sense for this unusual setup?
Even with modern high-temp superconductors, it's a lot of expensive infrastructure, a lot of protective redundancy, and a lot of maintenance.
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Almost no one in Europe has per-capita energy use anywhere close to the US, so why would China? And I don't think it's just that we have less AC, though that's surely the strongest contributor.
We have less AC, but we have more heating, which is more energy intensive than AC.
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Generating terawatts is not unreasonable. But transportation of it out of North Africa would be almost as big an effort as building the solar farms in question.
How would you go about it? Lots of high-voltage lines, or is there something else that'd make more sense for this unusual setup?
Maybe you could go from Tunisia to Europe, but supplying African countries seems more attainable.
It'd be nice if you could turn the energy into a gas like methane, pull CO2 out of the atmosphere in the process. Good for the atmosphere and you could transport gas over long distances.
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We have less AC, but we have more heating, which is more energy intensive than AC.
I’m doubtful about both of these claims (Europe has more heating than the US and that heating is more energy-intensive than AC). The latter seems particularly hard to believe given how efficient heating is compared to A.C.
Therefore they use less "energy" (i.e. Electrical energy)
All just a theory