Re:More energy on less land: The drive to shrink solar’s foo...
by Schroedingersat on Tuesday August 16, 2022 @02:17AM
(#32479720)
That's because it's such a non issue that the cost of thinking about it for a little bit exceeds the downsides.
When it is an issue there are countless solutions from sharing with livestock (already done in some areas) to providing partial shade for non energy crops like lettuce or capcicum that increase yield to covering parking.
For reference, there are about 2.5 billion parking spaces in the usa which take 20-50m^2 each, very little of which is more than three stories deep. This is room for between 1 and 5 TW of net (ie. averaged over the year including nights) capacity or roughly the USA's entire energy consumption. You could also replace a small fraction (about 5%) of corn used for ethanol (not the total corn) and get a similar result.
When it is an issue there are countless solutions from sharing with livestock (already done in some areas) to providing partial shade for non energy crops like lettuce or capcicum that increase yield to covering parking.
For reference, there are about 2.5 billion parking spaces in the usa which take 20-50m^2 each, very little of which is more than three stories deep. This is room for between 1 and 5 TW of net (ie. averaged over the year including nights) capacity or roughly the USA's entire energy consumption. You could also replace a small fraction (about 5%) of corn used for ethanol (not the total corn) and get a similar result.