Musk: "You could take a corner of Utah and Nevada and power the entire United States with solar power."
"The important thing to appreciate is if let's say the only thing we had was solar energy, that that was the only power source, if you just took a small section of Spain, you could power all of Europe,"
he said. "It's a very small amount of area that's actually needed to generate the electricity we need to power civilization or in the case of the U.S., a little corner of Nevada or Utah, power the entire United States."
More power from the sun hits the Earth in a single hour than humanity uses in an entire year, yet
solar only provided 0.39% of the energy used in the US last year.
f solar is 20% efficient at turning solar energy into power (
as it has been in lab tests), we'd only need to cover a land area about the size of Spain to power the entire Earth renewably in 2030 — just like Musk said.
And while it's useful in the map to show the solar installations as squares bunched together, this area could actually be spread over more space, with solar panels tucked away on rooftops and spread across deserts.
Remember, that's if we only relied on solar — no fossil fuel-guzzling oil, coal, or natural gas.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-solar-panels-to-power-the-earth-2015-12?r=US&IR=T
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...trump-green-energy-fossil-fuels-a7541971.html
Solar energy in the US
employs more people than traditional coal, gas and oil combined, a report has found, in a revelation that could undermine
Donald Trump’s argument that
green energy isn’t good for the economy.
But then Rupert Murdoch/Trump wont benefit from domestic oil reserves, and big oil Exxon corps / Saudi Arabia wont benefit from slaughtering Yemen, car manufacturers from oil...