concentrating solar power

Amazing as it may sound, that two-coal-fired-power-plants-a-week building orgy going on in China could prove to be completely unnecessary.

It was on Twitter that I discovered a kinda wonky news service that calls itself SciDevNet (I think I've got the capitalization right...)  that just ran a story headlined "Wind power could blow away coal in China."

Do tell! This could be significant. 

Seems that by 2030 China could be getting all its juice from wind turbines. There is a tradeoff, though: They'd have to cover an area three-quarters the size of Texas with those big propellers.

As with the idea of blanketing much of the United States' southwestern deserts with solar arrays, you have to wonder what kind of environmental effects that might have. For example, what will this do to migrating birds? It's a question we've been asking ourselves here at InvestigateWest as we report on the Pacific Flyway.

But when you consider what an environmental and human disaster Chinas' Three Gorges Dam is becoming, and the population growth the country is facing, wind turbines seem like something that's at least got to be considered. (What about solar? Folks -- are there downsides to solar other than the fact that it uses water in the desert? We're all ears.)

SciDevNet's Shanshan Li and Yidong Gong tell us that the study they're writing about, by Chinese and U.S.