have been imposed on the height and speed of the turbines to lower the risk of bird death.
Given these existing technological limitations and regulations, the aggregate demand for land to power our future green economy is huge. Suppose the annual electricity demand in the United States remains at aboutin 2050 and the land requirement per MW does not decline. We would need 120,000 square miles, or 77 million acres, of land to install the wind and solar facilities for the energy transition. This is equivalent to the area of three-quarters of California, or two Floridas.
But, as with any new project, a company can't just slap down a new solar plant or wind farm anywhere it wants. For one thing, these sorts of projects require a specific type of land to be cost-efficient and useful. Ideal locations for green-power plants should be in a sunny or windy place, on cheap land, close to the final electricity consumers. But there's one crucial problem: a lot of people want that sort of land.