Spending Land to Buy Energy

Lamar Alexander wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal about the downside of some renewable energy - the amount of space they occupy. Land use is something to be considered, although I don't think that alternative energy represents "an unprecedented assault on the American landscape". Here is a restatement of that article.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar recently announced plans to cover 1,000 square miles of land in Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah with solar collectors to generate electricity. He’s also talking about generating 20% of our electricity from wind. This would require building about 186,000 50-story wind turbines that would cover an area the size of West Virginia – not to mention 19,000 new miles of high-voltage transmission lines.

The House of Representatives has passed climate legislation that requires electric utilities to get 20% of their power mostly from wind and solar by 2020. These renewable energy sources are receiving huge subsidies – all to supposedly create jobs and hurry us down the road to an America running on wind and sunshine as outlined in President Obama’s Inaugural Address.
Yet all this assumes renewable energy is a free lunch – a benign, “sustainable” way of running the country with minimal impact on the environment. That assumption experienced a rude awakening on August 26, when The Nature Conservancy published a paper titled “Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America”. This report posed a simple question: How much land is required for the different energy sources that power the country? The answers deserved far greater public attention.

Ø Nuclear energy requires one square mile to produce one million megawatt-hours per year, enough electricity for about 90,000 homes.

Ø Geothermal energy requires three square miles to produce the same megawatt-hours per year.

Ø Biofuels – ethanol and biodiesel - requires up to 500 square miles producing the same amount of energy.

Ø Coal requires four square miles.

Ø Solar thermal takes six square miles.

Ø Natural gas takes eight square miles.

Ø Oil requires 18 square miles.

Ø Wind farms require over 30 square miles.

There’s one more consideration regarding Secretary Salazar’s plan. Solar collectors must be washed down once a month or they collect too much dirt to be effective. They also need to be cooled by water. Where amid the desert and scrub land will we find all that water? No wonder the Wildlife Conservancy and other environmentalists are already opposing solar projects on Western land.

Renewable energy is not a free lunch. It is an unprecedented assault on the American landscape. Before we find ourselves engulfed in energy sprawl, it’s imperative that we take a closer look at the current Administrations plans and promises.