It's actually quite ironic that renewable energy activism tends to completely ignore one critical resource it uses that also happens to be non-renewable: the land surface.
The challenge here is that the best renewable energy source (solar) uses three orders of magnitude (1000x) more land than the best non-renewable (gas).
To replace gas with nuclear you need pretty much the same area. But to replace gas with solar you suddenly need to find 1000x more extra space.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421518305512
@kravietz First: I call bullshit. How much areas are disturbed by harvesting, transporting, storing and consuming gas? And unless you're clearing forests I'm not sure the land used by solar and wind matters much. Lots of "useless" land lying about, like deserts, or areas either too cold or hot for significant vegetation. And the ground beneath to wind turbines and solar can still be utilized, it's not like it's totally useless.
And your second argument is not true either. Solar panels compete for sunlight with both plants and humans. Large solar farms in densely inhabited areas are an obvious residential and environmental concern. Wind farms are noisy and require that no trees are growing around, which was precisely the reason why they faced opposition in Sweden when they were forcing deers migrating away due to the noise.
