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The Nature Conservancy has performed a number of public services across the country and especially in North Carolina. It has focused on saving the last wild places and brought a level of public attention to natural resources that might never have gotten widespread attention. The Needmore tract along the Little Tennessee River in the mountains of North Carolina and the hardwood bottomland forest of the lower Roanoke River in northeastern N.C. are two that I've seen up close, and I'm grateful to the Conservancy and all the other private and public organizations that have preserved these areas for the ages.
Now there's more reason to take note of the Conservancy: It has done us all another public service with the publication of a new study that warns about energy sprawl in America as we put more and more emphasis on sustainable energy projects to generate the power a growing nation will need.
Surprising findings
The study - "Energy Sprawl of Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America" - has surprised a lot of people who think it's a warning against turning to sustainable energy. It isn't - but it is a candid look at an issue policymakers need to be thinking about: how much land will be required to develop projects such as large-scale solar and wind farms compared to traditional energy plants.
As Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander pointed out the other day in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, nuclear energy requires one square mile; coal plants require four square miles including mining. Solar requires six square miles, while wind farms need 30 square miles or more.
Alexander raised the specter of 50-story tall turbines all along the Appalachian mountain chain from Maine to Georgia and called renewable energy "an unprecedented assault on the American landscape."
His op-ed helps open some eyes to something we need to think about. But I think he missed a key point of the study, which is that while we need renewable energy, we need to be sure we place projects in the right places, not where they'll do damage. Another point: energy efficiency ought to be a prime source for the energy we need.
The study itself is not an easy read, but its findings aren't hard to understand, either. Still, a key author of the report, Robert McDonald, has been surprised by the reaction to the report in the media and elsewhere.
Energy sprawl: it's coming
He posted a follow-up on the Web with these points, excerpted for length:
•Climate change is the big threat to America's wildlife (and to our communities). Severe climate change has the potential to imperil many more species than energy sprawl.
•Energy sprawl from now to 2030 will happen regardless of whether there is a comprehensive climate bill. By far the largest amount of energy sprawl will come from biofuel production, driven by the renewable fuel standard and other laws already in place.
•Energy sprawl concerns should not be an excuse for inaction on climate change, although land-use impacts should be one of things thought about while crafting climate change legislation.
•While nuanced argument is normal in a scientific publication, it tends to get simplified in the public debate. For instance, the energy sprawl report should not be taken as an endorsement of nuclear power by The Nature Conservancy.
On this one metric, nuclear power does have a small spatial footprint, as do several other technologies such as geothermal. But there are lots of other metrics policymakers must think about when they are comparing technologies, such as cost effectiveness, job creation, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy independence. With nuclear power, there are significant issues related to water use and the safe isolation of waste for millennia.
Avoiding negative impacts
• The energy sprawl paper does not mean The Nature Conservancy is somehow against renewable energy generation. Increased renewable energy production will have to be one of the ways America begins to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The energy sprawl report simply shows renewable energy production has the potential to take a significant amount of space, particularly biofuel production.
•Negative environmental impacts can be avoided through the proper siting of new energy development, an approach The Nature Conservancy calls Energy By Design: Avoid development when you can, minimize impacts when you can't, and compensate for those impacts that cannot be avoided.
•Most important, energy efficiency could be the key way to combat energy sprawl. Saving energy saves land by avoiding future energy development that would have otherwise occurred.
The Nature Conservancy report reflects concerns that policymakers are already examining in North Carolina. The General Assembly is in the midst of a hot debate over how much and what kinds of wind energy projects to allow above mountain ranges of 3,000 feet in altitude - and there's increasing interest in wind farms in offshore waters off Cape Hatteras.
The old real estate advice comes to mind: in renewable energy, location is everything.
