The Energy Dilemma

[avocado_tom]

Well looky there..."green" energy sources require 5 to 100 times the amount of land that fossil sources such as coal require. Not saying that we shouldn't pursue these options, but they're certainly not a silver bullet

Comments

[fudjo]

As much as it's an inefficient program now, the Conservation Reserve Program gives subsidies to farms to have them use a portion of their land to plant high grass and other erosion-preventing measures in order to avoid another Dust Bowl. That program could become more significant if we end up needing more land for green energy sources.

[allartburns]

Well, that kinda makes sense, as coal is basically supercondensed biomass, right?

On the one hand, land is something we have a lot of, and maybe exploiting it by pulling CO2 out of the air to create fuel would be better than pulling more CO2 out of the ground and putting it into the air.

On the other hand, we have huge amounts of "wasted" land right now that could be pulling CO2 out of the air. Converting a flat roof into a extensive green roof might not gain us me any energy production, but it would help *conserve* energy while taking CO2 out of the air.

Wonder if I can justify doing the arithmetic on that instead of working. Probably not. :-)

[alicelee]

I have a soft spot for papers like this. :) Confession: I read the abstract, skimmed lightly, and pulled up figure 3.

Even sprawling solar photovoltaic uses less land than petroleum? Seriously? That's good news. As others here note, there are many ways to make better use of existing space (e.g., wind and grazing land seem well matched, and dual use does not mean losing habitat to energy. The authors raise this point themselves, along with a reminder that wind power does not do good things for bird populations.)

The paper sure makes a case for geothermal over biofuels.

[talldean]

I think the problem becomes, eventually, we outbreed any sustainable amount of resource use.

Aren't you in Reno?

[talldean]

It takes 150 tons of concrete to install a single wind turbine. They're interestingly resource-heavy.

[unprotoize]

There are different types of land use, too - consider how nasty mountaintop removal is.