Energy Sprawl - Yet Another Unintended Consequence

Ronald Bailey | September 2, 2009

The online journal PLOS One published an interesting new study last week in which researchers try to quantify in various scenarios just how much land will be needed by 2030 to produce renewable energy, a.k.a. energy sprawl. They find:

Regardless of climate change policy, the total new area affected by energy production techniques by 2030 exceeds 206,000 square kilometers in all scenarios, an area larger than the state of Nebraska (emphasis added). Biofuels have the greatest cumulative areal impact of any energy production technique, despite providing less than 5% of the U.S. total energy under all scenarios. Biofuel production, and hence new area impacted, is similar among scenarios because EIA's economic model suggests that, under current law, incentives for biofuel production cause expansion of this energy production technique regardless of climate policy.

The authors say "regardless of climate change policy" because massive biofuel production was mandated by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Below is a chart summarizing their findings. Note that even more land will be needed to produce renewable fuels under a carbon cap-and-trade scheme.

Who knew that mandating and subsidizing renewable fuels would mean taking more land from nature? Well, I did, for one.  

Comments

jtuf|9.2.09 @ 2:03PM|#

I wouldn't recommend this, but we could get biofuels without sacrificing any land if we went to the traditional source of oil, whales.

Mon>kee|9.2.09 @ 2:31PM|#

these estimates probably assume that agricultural protectionism is a factor,

there are plenty of parts of the world were land is inefficiently used due to outdated farming techniques that could become highly profitable sources of biofuel

creech|9.2.09 @ 3:04PM|#

The size of Nebraska? How does that compare with the footprint oil drilling would create in ANWR? One is good, the other evil because why?

|9.2.09 @ 3:11PM|#

Because tourists go to Alaska and not to Nebraska.

|9.2.09 @ 3:15PM|#

PL: Having been to the North Slope, there are damned few tourists anywhere near where petroleum might be produced on the coastal plain. Think vast swarms of mosquitoes in summer and long frigid dark nights in winter. Very scenic.

jtuf|9.2.09 @ 3:17PM|#

Creech, in New Jersey, many environmentalists count farmland as open space. This way, they can keep poor people out of their school districts by preserving farms.

|9.2.09 @ 4:17PM|#

I question the biofuels estimate, because I'll bet it assumes that the crops are grown just for that purpose. But if we can get cellulosic ethanol to work economically, then it can use crop waste and so on, and have a much smaller geographic footprint.

TallDave|9.2.09 @ 5:55PM|#

Eh, switchgrass grows in scrubland. I'm not going to miss scrub, especially if the land is being used to let me drive.

Aesthetically, it seems like an improvement.

Lamarck\'s Giraffe|9.2.09 @ 7:38PM|#

PapayaSF, yeah and if fusion was economically viable we wouldn't need biofuels at all.

Get on that would ya?


Talldave, switchgrass is a cellulosic biofuel. Dee above.

Michael Ejercito|9.2.09 @ 9:58PM|#

I wouldn't recommend this, but we could get biofuels without sacrificing any land if we went to the traditional source of oil, whales.

Is anyone forgetting that wood is a biofuel?

There are currently brush fires burning around Los Angeles. Imagine if all that brush had been harvested...

|9.2.09 @ 11:31PM|#

People are our best resource. We should burn them for energy.

|9.2.09 @ 11:55PM|#

I agree with you mostly. Biodiesel is produced from oil which is harvested from food crops. On the other hand, the WVO produced biodiesel was already harvested for us to eat... it's just not letting it go to waste. And switchgrass?

But ethanol is, in it's current state, a waste. Better technology for breaking down cellulose will make the stalks useful, but that's a while away. Corn ethanol the worst... well, corn itself is the worst...

Just as a heads up, algal fuels would be optimally grown in a desert wasteland...

|9.3.09 @ 12:25AM|#

Nick wrote, "Just as a heads up, algal fuels would be optimally grown in a desert wasteland..."

And don't forget CSP (concentrated solar, i.e., solar-thermal). Just a 100 mi. by 100 mi. patch of desert -- far smaller than the State of Nebraska, by the way -- could offset a huge chunk of our energy consumption (some say handle it entirely; I'm not so sure, but I'm convinced that the output would address a HUGE chunk of our national demand). Alternatively, by building 400 5x5 mile CSP solar farms, at the pace required to supply increasing demand for electricity, especially as electric vehicles went into service, we could 1) gradually wean ourselves away from more problematic sources of energy; 2) increase generation capacity evenly throughout the Southwest, so as to avoid overtaxing the power grid at any point.

Would the "loss" of a 100x100 mile patch of desert (or its equivalent in a larger number of smaller solar farms) really be a true loss?

jasno|9.3.09 @ 2:48AM|#

What about the ocean? Is there some reason we couldn't float solar panels in the doldrums? They'd stay cooler, and operate more efficiently. They could either split seawater into hydrogen or cable the power back to the mainland.