Transmission Lines - Wind & Solar Need 5 Times MoreNuclear power also requires much less land and new transmission infrastructure than renewable energy to produce the same power. The Princeton researchers, for example, found that a net-zero pathway relying only on renewable energy required quintupling existing electricity transmission, while one that relied less on renewable energy required only a doubling.
The United States needs to produce and transmit vastly larger amounts of renewable energy, to be sure, but given the permitting and siting challenges, it makes good sense to include nuclear power—which faces opposition of its own but has a much smaller physical and environmental footprint—among the zero-emission tools to achieve deep decarbonization.