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Comment by juiceandjuice | Hacker News Reader

> http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international...

I can't imagine any scenario where Greenpeace would actually be happy besides companies never using any sort of energy at all.

To replace coal (7PWh) with solar energy, you'd need the entire state of New Jersey (~22e9 m^2) filled solar panels averaging 20% efficiency and the equivalent of 4 peak hours of sunlight over the year. With the area of Pennsylvania you could start to approach the total energy consumption of the US. Maybe those environmental impacts would be worth it?

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You know, I recently rode my bike through some villages in Germany. Just about every house had solar panels on their roof. My parents have solar panels on their roof. They produce more electricity than they use and only need very little oil and some wood for heating in winter. And they are no exception.

Germany currently produces 20% of its energy using regenerating resources (water, sun, wind).

It's not like you have to put all the solar panels in huge parks. Just put them on roofs. My uncle works at a big company and they just put solar panels on their roofs. That company now produces more energy than they need. Solar panels are already efficient enough to usually provide more energy per area than people or businesses consume in the same area.

The next step would be to have batteries in every household, to save on energy losses during 'transportation'. Also, solar panels are getting more efficient and cheap every year.

Perhaps this is a silly question, but do we have any information on available roof space across the United States? I'd be interested to see what kind of power output could be produced if we were able to add solar panels to a large majority of the nation's buildings.

Though I suspect that kind of distribution would significantly increase costs for duplicate components and may fall victim to low efficiency transfers into the grid. Afraid I don't know enough about how today's systems operate.

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