Yes, renewables can power all human energy requirements

Posted Feb 27, 2025 14:35 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Yes, renewables can power all human energy requirements by farnz
Parent article: Building an open-source battery

Solar and arable farming are surely mutually exclusive. Crops do not grow well under large panels. And what you can grow is then harder to efficiently harvest.

Yes, renewables can power all human energy requirements

Posted Feb 27, 2025 14:41 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Depends on the crop; solar panels over farmland should be implemented as a "farmland first" sort of deal, where you place the panels to shade areas that get too much sunlight, and to direct rainfall to where the plants can make most use of it.

Maximally efficient use of land for solar power is incompatible with farmland, since that needs large panels; fortunately, we can get all the energy we need by only using rooftops for power, so for farmland, you're using the panels where you would otherwise have put up structures anyway.

Yes, renewables can power all human energy requirements

Posted Feb 27, 2025 14:45 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

There is a growing "solar garden" movement here trying to prove that assertion wrong.

But all of this is getting pretty far off the original topic. There are plenty of places to discuss these issues, but I don't think this is what most folks come to LWN for, so maybe we can wind it down, please?