Thread by @ShellenbergerMD

New research from Princeton University and Bloomberg confirms that renewables require 300 - 400 times more land than natural gas and nuclear plants

Finally They Admit Renewables Are Terrible For The Environment

My latest for Substack. Please share!

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/finally-they…

Over the last few years, I have been pushing back against the idea that renewables are good for the environment.

In 2019 I published, “Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet,” which was the most-read article of the year at Quillette.

quillette.com/2019/02/27/why…

And I gave a TEDx talk by the same name which today has 2.5 million views.

Last year, in Apocalypse Never, I pointed out that wind and solar projects require 300 to 400 times more land than nuclear or natural gas plants, and that 100% renewables would require increasing land used for energy from 0.5% today to 25% to 50%.

amazon.com/Apocalypse-Nev…

Needless to say, the renewable energy industry and its boosters haven’t liked what I’ve written, and have sought to cancel me. Last year, a group of activist scientists denounced me as factually wrong, and demanded that I be censored by Facebook.

They drew on junk science to claim that solar required just 3.6 times more land and wind just 5.8 times more than nuclear and natural gas plants. In response, Facebook censored me and denied me the right to appeal their verdict.

environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2020/…

But now researchers at Princeton & Bloomberg have admitted that I was right & my critics were wrong. Their research shows wind requires 370x times more land than nuclear. Shifting toward renewables, as Biden’s climate plan would do, would devastate America’s natural environment

Says Bloomberg, “If the U.S. wants a carbon-free economy by 2050 using the least amount of land, it will need to rely far less on wind and solar and instead build hundreds of nuclear plants & gas plants outfitted with systems to capture the CO2 before it escapes.”

Bloomberg correctly notes that “Biden’s plan doesn’t need to entirely rest on wind and solar. Nuclear energy, which requires far less space, is also emission free.”

But in its current form, Biden’s plan would result in the loss of half of America’s nuclear power plants between now and 2030, which would nearly wipe out nearly all of the electricity Princeton researchers say could be generated by off-shore wind.

Despite repeated appeals by Environmental Progress & the world’s leading environmental scientists, Democrats have rejected proposals to even modestly level the playing field by offering nuclear plants a fraction of the subsidies Congress has been giving solar & wind