25   Living on other countries’ renewables?

Whether the Mediterranean becomes an area of cooperation or confrontation in the 21st century will be of strategic importance to our common security.

Joschka Fischer, German Foreign Minister, February 2004

We’ve found that it’s hard to get off fossil fuels by living on our own re-
newables. Nuclear has its problems too. So what else can we do? Well,
how about living on someone else’s renewables? (Not that we have any en-
titlement to someone else’s renewables, of course, but perhaps they might
be interested in selling them to us.)

Most of the resources for living sustainably are related to land area: if
you want to use solar panels, you need land to put them on; if you want
to grow crops, you need land again. Jared Diamond, in his book Collapse,
observes that, while many factors contribute to the collapse of civilizations,
a common feature of all collapses is that the human population density
became too great.

Places like Britain and Europe are in a pickle because they have large
population densities, and all the available renewables are diffuse – they
have small power density (table 25.1). When looking for help, we should
look to countries that have three things: a) low population density; b) large
area; and c) a renewable power supply with high power density.

Region Population Area
(km2)
Density
(persons
per km2)
Area per
person
(m2)
Libya 5 760 000 1 750 000 3 305 000
Kazakhstan 15 100 000 2 710 000 6 178 000
Saudi Arabia 26 400 000 1 960 000 13 74 200
Algeria 32 500 000 2 380 000 14 73 200
Sudan 40 100 000 2 500 000 16 62 300
World 6 440 000 000 148 000 000 43 23 100
Scotland 5 050 000 78 700 64 15 500
European Union 496 000 000 4 330 000 115 8 720
Wales 2 910 000 20 700 140 7 110
United Kingdom 59 500 000 244 000 243 4 110
England 49 600 000 130 000 380 2 630

Table 25.2 highlights some countries that fit the bill. Libya’s population
density, for example, is 70 times smaller than Britain’s, and its area is
7 times bigger. Other large, area-rich, countries are Kazakhstan, Saudi
Arabia, Algeria, and Sudan.

POWER PER UNIT LAND
OR WATER AREA
Wind 2 W/m2
Offshore wind 3 W/m2
Tidal pools 3 W/m2
Tidal stream 6 W/m2
Solar PV panels 5–20 W/m2
Plants 0.5 W/m2
Rain-water
   (highlands)
0.24 W/m2
Hydroelectric
   facility
11 W/m2
Solar chimney 0.1 W/m2
Concentrating solar
   power (desert)
15 W/m2
Table 25.1. Renewable facilities have to be country-sized because all renewables are so diffuse.
Table 25.2. Some regions, ordered from small to large population density. See p338 for more population densities.