[Eco] Renewable Energy Could Wreck the Environment

[TVTom]

 [image: LiveScience] <http://www.livescience.com/>
 Study: Renewable Energy Not
Green<http://www.livescience.com/environment/070724_renewable_energy.html>

By Sara Goudarzi <saragoudarzi at gmail.com>, Special to LiveScience

posted: 25 July 2007 10:29 am ET

Renewable energy could wreck the environment, according to a study that
examined how much land it would take to generate the renewable resources
that would make a difference in the global energy system.

Building enough wind farms, damming adequate number of rivers and growing
sufficient biomass to produce ample kilowatts to make a difference in
meeting global energy demands would involve a huge invasion of nature,
according to Jesse Ausubel, a researcher at the Rockefeller University in
New York.

Ausubel came to this conclusion by calculating the amount of energy that
each renewable source can produce in terms of area of land disturbed.

"We looked at the different major alternatives for renewable
energies<http://www.livescience.com/environment/top10_power_21stcentury.html>and
we measured [the power output] for each of them and how much land it
will rape," Ausubel told *LiveScience*.

* Land grab for energy*

The results, published in the current issue of International Journal
of *Nuclear
Governance, Economy and Ecology*, paint a grim picture for the environment.
For example, according to the study, in order to meet the 2005
electricity<http://www.livescience.com/electricity/>demand for the
United States, an area the size of Texas would need to be
covered with wind structures running round the clock to extract, store and
transport the energy.

New York City would require the entire area of Connecticut to become a wind
farm to fully power all its electrical equipment and gadgets.

You can convert every kilowatt generated directly into land area disturbed,
Ausubel said. "The biomass or wind will produce one or two watts per square
meter. So every watt or kilowatt you want for light bulbs in your house can
be translated into your hand reaching out into nature taking land."

* Small dent in landmass*

Other scientists are not on board with Ausubel's analysis and say that his
use of energy density—the amount of energy produced per each area of land—as
the only metric may not be the correct way to calculate the impact of energy
from renewable resources on the
environment<http://www.livescience.com/technology/destroy_earth_mp.html>.


"In general, I would say his use of energy density just does not capture the
entire scope of issues and capabilities for all the different resources,"
said John A. Turner, a principal scientist at the U.S. National Renewable
Energy Laboratory, who was not involved in the study.

Turner explains that if the entire United States were to be powered by solar
cells with 10 percent efficiency, an area about 10,000 square miles would
have to be covered by solar panels in a sunny place such as Arizona or
Nevada.

"Now there's 3.7 million square miles of area for the continental U.S."
Turner told *LiveScience*. "This represents a very, very tiny area. And
that's just one technology."

"If you look at how much land area we've covered with roads, it's more than
double that. So yeah, it's a large area, 100 miles by 100 miles, if you pack
it into one thing, but if you scatter it across the country and compare it
to all the other things we've already covered, it's not an egregious area."

* Double use of land*

Ausubel's analysis concludes that other renewable sources such as solar
power and biomass are "un-green". According to his findings, to obtain power
for a large proportion of the country from biomass would require 965 square
miles of prime Iowa land. A photovoltaic solar cell plant would require
painting black about 58 square miles, plus land for storage and retrieval to
equal a 1,000-megawatt electric nuclear plant, a more environmentally
friendly choice, Ausubel wrote.

However, new land doesn't have to be put into use just for a solar plant.
Some scientists say already existing infrastructures could be doubled up for
use to cover such an area.

"We could do with just rooftops of buildings and homes, land area we've
already covered," Turner said. "We could meet 25 percent of our annual
electrical demand by just putting solar panels on already existing rooftops
of homes and businesses."

"Similarly, wind farms use up a lot of land area but they only really take
up 5 percent of the land they cover," he explained. "The rest of it can be
used for farming so it doesn't really impact the land area that much."

* Going nuclear*

Ausubel thinks that a better alternative to renewable energy
resources<http://www.livescience.com/technology/ap_050826_wave_energy.html>would
be nuclear power, which would leave behind far less waste than other
alternatives

"There are three legs to the stool of environmentally sound energy
policy—one is improved efficiency, second is increased reliance on natural
gas with carbon capture and sequestration and the third is nuclear power,"
he explained.

"Nuclear power has the proliferation issues, which are serious but the
environmental issues are small. With nuclear energy the issue is to contain
radioactivity, which has been successfully done."

Turner agrees that nuclear power leaves a smaller carbon footprint, but he
thinks that the waste issue associated with this technology is very serious.


"It's unconscionable to dismiss the issue of nuclear waste," Turner said,
"because you have to store that waste for hundreds of thousands of years and
nuclear wastes are particularly damaging to the environment and have social
impacts also."

Similarly, Gregory A. Keoleian, co-Director for the Center for Sustainable
Systems at the University of Michigan, thinks more in-depth analyses are
needed before dismissing renewables and considering nuclear power as a
viable option.

"I think the characterizations made that 'renewables are not green' and
'nuclear is green' sound provocative, but they do not accurately represent
these technologies with respect to a comprehensive set of sustainability
criteria and analysis," Keoleian told *LiveScience*. "The treatment of
renewable technologies [in this study] is shallow and the coverage of the
nuclear fuel cycle is incomplete."

To capture the entire scope of issues and capabilities for all the different
resources, scientists believe there need to be more studies and discussions.


"We have a finite amount of time, a finite amount of money and a finite
amount of energy, and we need to be very careful about the choices we
make<http://www.livescience.com/environment/070131_GW_tips.html>as we
build this new energy infrastructure," Turner said. "I'd like to see
something that will last for millennia and certainly solar, wind and biomass
will last as long as the sun shines. "
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