A back of the envelope calculation by Grist guest commentator Gar Lipow shows that since solar uses the same lay of land year after year, and coal has to mine new land each year, the energy per sq foot of land for a facility like Nevada Solar One is higher than a typical coal plant and eastern mountain-top removal coal mining.

Nevada Solar One will make approximately 154kWh per square foot in the next 20 years.  Coal mining will get you approximately 11.5 kWh per sq foot.  So for a comparable sized coal plant, it would take 13 times more land acreage to produce the energy, in this case 5300 acres for coal mining to 400 acres for the Nevada Solar One facility.