When it comes to the advocates of "Net Zero," many of whom just boarded carbon-spewing private jets to leave Brazil, where they attended the UN's COP30 time-waster, their plans always founder on the same rock. It all comes down to energy density. It always comes down to energy density. It always has come down to energy density, and it always will come down to energy density.
The "green energy" scolds are proposing to replace high-density energy sources, including gas, oil, coal, and nuclear power, with low-density sources, primarily wind and solar. The problem is simple: They can't. It just won't work.
A new study is now showing us the shocking amount of land it would take to replace fossil fuels with solar and wind power, and it's quite the eye-opener.
New research published in the journal Nature confirms what The Heartland Institute and our allies in the free-market environmental community have long argued: wind and solar power have low power density and thus impose huge environmental footprints. The new study acknowledges the environmental footprint of wind and solar is even larger than industry promoters have admitted. As a result, to reach net zero with wind and solar as the primary sources of electric power will require the transformation of a large swath of agricultural land and wildlands into industrial power sites. The report from researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state found a high-renewable scenario will require a lot more land, much of it on or near undeveloped or wild areas, than a plan for less wind and solar incorporation into the grid.
"Large swathe" just doesn't seem to do this justice. Here are some specifics from the study:
The footprint of the anticipated growth in wind and solar facilities alone is greater than the size of New Jersey and close to the size of Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island combined. Other analyses suggest the land footprint of wind and solar to meet net zero goals is even larger. A June 2025 report from the Center of the American Experiment found the low energy density (the amount of energy produced by volume or mass, in this case land space required to produce a megawatt of power) means that
...wind turbines and solar panels need at least 10 times as much land per unit of power produced as coal- or natural gas-fired power plants. To generate the same amount of electricity as a 1 GW nuclear plant, which occupies approximately 1.3 square miles, one would need between 45 and 75 square miles of solar panels or between 260 and 3,360 square miles of wind turbines. The latter is larger than the combined areas of Delaware and Rhode Island. If the U.S. relied entirely on wind turbines for electricity, it would need about twice the size of the state of California [to generate enough electricity to satisfy American needs].
This is all land that can't be used for agriculture. It's land that is of limited use as a wildlife habitat. It's conceivable that land covered with windmills may be suitable for grazing cattle, and won't be completely shut off to wildlife, although windmills are notoriously hard on birds, especially large soaring birds like hawks and eagles.
Solar farms, on the other hand, are completely cut off from any other use. And note that this difference is even more marked when you look at nuclear power; a 1 GW nuclear power plant with a footprint of 1.3 square miles, produces as much energy as 45 to 75 square miles of solar panels and between 260 and 3,360 square miles of windmills. If you are, like me, more accustomed to thinking in terms of acreage, that nuclear plant would take up 832 acres; the solar panels, between 28,800 and 480,000 acres, and the wind power installation, between 166,400 and 87,023,600 acres. That's right - nearly 90 million acres of windmills, to replace one nuclear power plant.
If it's Net Zero you're after, solar power is an environmental disaster. Wind power is far worse.
Read More: Another One Bites the Dust: Wyoming Wind Farm Coming Down
Huge California Solar Plant Shutting Down After Years of Failure
It's all about energy density.
Of course, none of this takes into account all the costs of manufacturing the windmills and the solar panels. None of this takes into account the minerals that must be mined, the raw materials that must be processed, the transportation of the panels and windmills, the installation of those panels and mills, and the cost in diesel-driven conveyances that deliver and install them. Nor does this take into account the horrible vulnerability these "green" energy solutions have to things like hailstorms or lightning.
That's why the schemes of the climate scolds always fail. It's a matter of ideology over reality, and for the left, climate scolds are overwhelmingly creatures of the left - ideology takes precedence over reality, every time.
It's the same answer as always: Solar and wind power can be great in niche applications. As far as a grid-scale solution, forget it. It just won't work. As I'm continually pointing out, we solve today's problems with tomorrow's technology, and in this case, the future still belongs to gas, oil, and nuclear power, which advances in technology, in extraction and refining, will only make more, not less, valuable.
