Of course he didn't mean that we should cover all the highways; it just says we could afford to build and maintain them all and have that much land area, so building an equivalent area of solar would be both cheaper and feasible.
That was over a decade ago; solar is both cheaper and more efficient. IIRC something small like a hundred km2 or so of desert would do the trick. We spend much more of that growing corn that we wastefully turn into fuel.
By that logic of ignoring constraints, nuclear takes 0 land area compared to solar and could generate more power than solar panels we’d ever produce.
FWIW there are a lot of deserts and plains that can be used for year round generation.
Does this work address a specious, disingenuous argument that is being put forth by NIMBYs to block solar installation, so does it address a real pain point?
I agree we should be able to build enough solar but does this work address a real bottleneck or a fake problem presented as real by people with ulterior motives?
We could easily find many many large expanses of land, and given the margins on farming, many in my local area are renting / selling / building solar farms on the corners or harder-to-reach areas of their fields. Since those areas tend to have trees around anyway .... But none of that is really a viewshed problem unless you've modelled trees.
Now in hillier areas or mountainous regions this gets more compliated.
Lots of NIMBYs that “did their own research” to conclude that solar is actually bad for the environment or uneconomical or whatever. But the real reason for their rage is that they see it as a physical manifestation of the spread of “progressive ideas” and for that reason alone it must be stopped