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.
The reason this might be counter-intuitive is a widespread misconception that solar panels somehow arrive to this world made of pranic energy and just magically appear on the target site.
Unfortunately this is not the case. Solar panels are made entirely from metals that are mined, mining of which (especially cadmium, rare-earth metals) produce huge amounts of toxic waste which needs to be processed and stored.
@kravietz I'm not naïve about where solar panels come from. And the real counter-intuitiveness is how something that can power thousands of homes for decades over a small piece of land, should require more land in total than something that is in continuous need for new land over the same time frame, as well as in need for the making of new equipment used in exploring for gas deposits and laying new gas pipes to feed from the new deposits.
A 600 MW nuclear plant occupies maybe 0.5 km² and can run for 80 years at the same power 95% oftime.
A 500 MW solar plant occupies 2500 ha and will run for maybe 20 years with power output degrading over time, and only operating maybe 20% at full power.
Gas is a no-go anyway but Greens somehow prefer it.
