Because solar (for example) can often go on rooftops so not needing new land. And solar and wind are often good in remote areas where population is low and land is cheap.
I would regard that as a huge improvement in use from areas that are otherwise often fairly sterile from a biodiversity point of view, and only get used by a fraction of the population.
What is the 'cost' of those courses, vs PV, vs horrible climate change?
But the point remains that very significant PV can be provided on already-in-use land from homes and warehouses to reservoirs and farm land agrivoltaics.
The solar discussed is massive investments into solar farm production.
To your point, sure you can do "remote" - you still have to get a lot of power transmission lines to remote locations, and yes you still have to buy the land. Its not a 0 cost investment. But that's what the accounting looks like when discussing this topic.
Its sloppy
Separate reports in the last couple of days suggest that both Norway and Germany could get ~25% of their total solar power from viable rooftop spaces, IIRC.
And indeed one very positive feature of solar is that it IS safe to deploy AT load/demand centres, very much reducing costs and losses in the last 'distribution' mile.
Solar also works when there is no grid locally, which is useful from rural UK to Africa.
[1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/10/03/rooftop-solar-could-g...
[2] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/rooftop-solar-housing-b...