Renewable Energy Power Density

Here’s an article about renewable energy power density, i.e., the amount of power available in a certain area, measured perhaps in Watts per square meter.  The article makes the point that, as the world’s population continues to move to the cities, we’ll have increasing difficulty generating the energy we need locally – especially if we do it with renewable resources, where we’re limited by the amount of radiation we’re receiving from the sun, or by the amount of energy in the wind that is blowing by us.  If you’re having trouble imagining this, think of the absurdity of heating, cooling, lighting, and providing power for the equipment in the 2,158,000 square feet of office space in the Empire State Building by putting solar panels on the roof.

This, of course, is the reason that all the other technologies associated with the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity need to come along at the same time, in particular, high voltage transmission to bring enormous amounts of electrical energy over large distances with a minimum of line loss.   If we still have a civilization here in 50 years, I predict that most of the energy consumed in the U.S. will come from PV, CSP, and wind scattered around the deserts and the plains, and that most of the energy for Europe will come from the Sahara.