This is just fucking dumb. Just a few percent of desert land would have to be covered in solar panels. And it’s by no means a given, that solar panels are bad for the environment they’re deployed in. Especially on desert land, they can also have positive effects. And then they’d agrivoltaics, i.e. the combination of solar panels and agriculture. That’s still in its infancy but holds a lot of promise. Of course no form of energy generation is without an ecological impact but solar and wind are by far the best options we have.

If this country has a wealth of anything, it’s sprawling parking lots that could be covered with solar.

It’s going to have to be both. Many homes don’t have suitable roofs for supporting enough solar to go totally off the grid. Even those that do often don’t have storage systems so still draw from the grid at times.

What I take from this is that we need to have a better way for people to sell excess power back to the grid, or have hybrid systems so they can alternate between their generated power and power from utility companies. Right now utilities buy power from individuals at a significantly reduced rate, which negates most of the value.

Besides that, generating power far away from populations means you’re going to have more loss in transmission. Generating it at the site it is needed will reduce the total generating capacity required.