Land area used for renewables always sounds like a lot, but it's not that much if you compare it to agriculture. For example, in Germany we use 2.4 million hectares for "energy crops". Just replacing those monocultures with solar panels would cover most of Germany's energy demand and leave some room for biodiversity under the panels.

In addition, solar panels can be put on top of existing infrastructure like houses so it takes no additional land.

... provided that you can store a sizeable amount of energy (what do you do when there's no sun for a whole week, which is absolutely not uncommon in Germany?). There isn't any technology up to snuff, unless maybe flooding a very large Alpine valley to build a STEP.

Batteries for overnight storage, Hydrogen or Methane for seasonal variations, various types of heat storage for heating and cooling. And demand shaping of course. It's mostly a matter of cost as far as I know.

Of course you'd want to rely on wind power more than just going all in for solar in Germany. It's not a particularly sunny country.

The largest power stations at the moment are always going to be stored hydro - they take up a lot of land. Those large coal burners also take up a lot of land when you consider the mines, transport infra, tailings dams, coal piles not to mention the clean air they "take up"

Thats why we should be exclusively nuclear.

Hear hear. We need a massive pro-nuclear public campaign. When people think of "nuclear power", they just think of Chernobyl.

In hindsight, Chernobyl might have done more harm to the planet than we thought - it single handedly turned public opinion against nuclear power, and all the clean energy it provides.

One wonders if we would have any of our current climate issues if we had adopted nuclear power en masse in the 80s and 90s.

When political decision makers and investors think of "nuclear power", they just think of overdue and over budget projects that may be finished in a decade.

In a decade renewables will be so far ahead that it would be plain stupid to push nuclear. This is why it's not happening outside a lobby group from the industry who try to push shady people like Michael Shellenberger.

I think 2-5x the cost, 10-1000x the capital intensity, and the industry's demand of a $200 million liability cap to make plants insurable.

Maybe if we had adopted nuclear en masse in the 80s we could have avoided current climate issues, but we didn't. I don't see why anybody thinks there's any point subsidizing this industry to hell and back now given the cost and the cheaper, less capital intensive options available that don't need subsidies.

Easy to have that opinion but the market is building wind/solar + battery + pumped hydro

The very article clearly explains why the world moves in the opposite direction.