🌱 This land is your (clean energy facility) land: 2035
(153) Battery recycling firms store $71M in 1 week
Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
The Hole in the Sky That We Actually Fixed (E)
Bottled water is full of microplastics. Is it still ‘natural’? (G)
Puerto Rico community pushes for rooftop solar (G)
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
![About Us | Dendra About Us | Dendra](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F04e1f90d-bd41-4f6e-a318-52c53aa2ed9e_1600x900.jpeg)
Battery recycling startup cylib raised a $60.6M Series A led by World Fund and Porsche Ventures (FN)
Ndustrial, an AI startup optimizing industrial energy consumption, raised an $18.5M Series B led by ABB and GS Energy (FN)
Dendra Systems, a startup focusing on AI-powered ecological restoration, raised a $15.7M Series B led by Zouk Capital (FN)
Princeton NuEnergy, a clean-tech innovator recycling lithium-ion battery materials, raised a $10.3M Series A led by SCGC, Tech Council Ventures, and LKQ Corporation (PRN)
Battery technology startup Bedrock Materials raised a $9M seed round led by Trucks Venture Capital, Refactor Capital, and Version One Ventures (PRN)
Orange Charger, a provider of EV charging solutions, raised a $6.5M seed round led by Munich Re Ventures and Climactic (FN)
ULEMCo, a startup converting commercial vehicles to run on hydrogen fuel, raised a $6.5M round led by Mercia Ventures (FN)
Active Surfaces, a startup developing lightweight flexible solar panels, raised a $5.6M pre-seed round led by Safar Partners (PRN)
SHAED, a sustainable transportation platform, raised a $5.7M seed round led by EnerTech Capital (PRN)
Green Theory
An American’s Renewable Footprint: 2035
Solar farms convert the sun’s free energy into usable electricity, but they also transform landscapes, sparking protest in some communities. Between Massachusetts residents worried about trees felled for solar, and counties across the US outright banning utility-scale solar projects, concerns about solar include disturbing wild habitats, displacing agricultural ways of life, and tainting beautiful vistas with alien rectangles.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa45373f2-61a1-4ed2-beb8-74b2060f979e_1368x1120.png)
Wind projects face similar hurdles, but large-scale renewable energy projects of all kinds, and loads of electrical infrastructure, will be necessary to meet climate goals.
Just how much land will these systems occupy?
According to a 2022 study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, here’s the renewables’ land footprint of 2035. Along the Constrained scenario, where advantages such as grid upgrades and carbon capture aren’t reliable paths to decarbonization, we could still build a 100% clean electricity grid.
Scaled down to a personal level, each person in the US will account for a renewables facility of around a fifth of an acre, and you can explore what it looks like in our interactive model.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fef3b0dd6-6a62-4e2d-8d95-bda507890c92_1600x1155.png)
If you recall our piece on the global average farm, you may notice the area for a personal slice of US clean electricity could fit inside one’s farm nearly 8 times over. What’s more, the vast majority of the land footprint across all renewables development is simply mixed-use wind land, which can double as humanity’s favorite land use (agriculture), among other options.
Grid transmission infrastructure will take up slightly more land space than the total offshore wind area will take up over water, even including the ocean between turbines. Ultimately, solar will occupy the largest amount of overland space, yet these projects, too, can be cited for mixed use, including grazing and growing.
Taken together, the direct footprint of land-based wind, plus solar, offshore wind, and transmission take up less space than the median US floorplan. Here’s the breakdown of the per-person space of each energy application.
Land-based wind direct-use land area: 150 sq ft
Utility-scale solar farm land area: 880 sq ft
Transmission infrastructure total mixed-use land area: 460 sq ft
Offshore wind mixed-use water area: 340 sq ft
To be sure, new infrastructure will come with changes, and costs. The energy transition will be expensive, but the total physical flows of materials will be lower, as these days we move around roughly 1.3 billion metric tonnes of fossil fuels every year. To power the globe on renewables, on the other hand, we need a total of only 6.5 billion tonnes of end-use raw materials through 2050: the equivalent of less than 20% per year, for the main effort of a one-time transition.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa78200f7-e783-4eab-bb30-4601cff8eb1e_1600x1197.png)
While renewables infrastructure will alter the face of some landscapes, and prudent citing is essential in protecting wildlife and human cultures, the energy transition will bring far greater returns to ecosystems, communities, our water, and our air. Distributed energy applications such as rooftop solar and micro wind harvesters can also help meet climate goals with little-to-no land use footprint, but large-scale projects will still be needed to clean up our grid on any reasonable timeline.
Alongside agriculture, the land use of these clean energy megaprojects looks far more manageable, and the anxious headspace taken up by opposition to development can make way for new questions. How can we build in sustainable or wild uses for energy infrastructure? If we’re not shipping around billions of tons of combustibles, what resurrected water table will return life to an abandoned habitat? And what new inspirations might we dream up, inhaling cleaner breaths?
The Closer
“Iceland summer nights like these - exploring under midnight sun, makes the memory of long dark winter days quickly fade…” -Chris Burkard