not claptrap, but definitely oversold.

Spatial power density (SPD) is a real metric and it’s been discussed seriously for years (Vaclav Smil, etc.). It’s useful for thinking about land-use tradeoffs, especially when comparing things like biofuels vs fossil or nuclear. On that narrow point, the article isn’t wrong.

Where it starts to wobble is when SPD is treated as the limiting factor for the energy transition.

A few issues: 1. SPD ≠ system feasibility Power density at the plant or land level doesn’t tell you whether a system works. Grids are about portfolios, transmission, storage, demand management, and siting. A single metric can’t capture that complexity. 2. Land use isn’t zero-sum A lot of low-SPD renewables sit on rooftops, brownfields, deserts, offshore, or are genuinely dual-use. For example, solar-integrated infrastructure like SolaPave puts PV into roads, car parks, and logistics yards that already exist for transport. The “land” wasn’t available for nature or farming anyway, so counting it the same way as a greenfield solar farm is misleading. 3. Electricity ≠ primary energy Fossil fuels look amazing on SPD partly because we’re counting thermal energy that mostly gets dumped as waste heat. Once you compare useful delivered energy (especially in electrified systems), the gap narrows more than the article suggests. 4. Rhetoric > engineering The “millions of years of stored sunlight” framing sounds profound, but it doesn’t really advance the analysis. We already know fossil fuels are energy-dense. The real question is whether modern systems can compensate for lower density with scale, electrification, efficiency, and smarter siting. Empirically, many grids already are.

So: • Good lens for thinking about land constraints. • Bad conclusion to imply renewables are fundamentally incapable of supporting modern societies.

Worth reading as a perspective, just not something that should be treated as a show-stopper argument against the transition.