How to Stall Energy Sprawl

I don't see what you consider competing land and energy interests?

What systems are using up 80,000 square miles of land? Wind power doesn't. And most solar based systems are located in either unfarmable desert or are small scale roof mounted systems. Some actual references to real installations that are using up viable farm land would be helpful.

If your referring to bio based fuel sources that land is not unproductive its just being used for a different crop. Typically one thats more cost effective, productive, and profitable than other crops that have to use government subsidies in order to even be grown.

Wind generators are farmed and grazed right up to their base and take up very small foot prints. Existing HV Powerline poles or towers take up far more total area of farmers fields than wind generators do. Plus wind generators pay the farmer for that land. No one I know that has power lines on their property gets any reimbursement for the land they loose to them. Also every wind generator I have seen has all of its electrical lines underground so that no land is lost to more power line poles. Many of the wind generators are placed in the corners of fields or along right of way paths that also prevent far less land waste.

Same with the bio fuel base crops. Those fields are not unused they are being used as much as any other field. People complain about the subsidies that farmers get for raising food crops that have no profit but then they complain again when the farmers switch to profitable non food crops. So which do you want? Subsidised food crops that you pay for out of your tax dollars or bio fuel crops that you pay for out of your pocket when you go to the fuel station?

I am not sure where you got your information from but around my parts farmers and ranchers hope to have wind farms placed on their property! Its easy money for no work output and the gains far exceed any possible losses! Plus they will happily grow what ever crop is most profitable too!

Hello tcmtech. The data are derived from a Nature Conservancy report. It concludes that "regardless of scenario [cap-and-trade, carbon storage, etc], at least 206,000 km2 of new land will be required to meet U.S. energy demand by 2030."

Of course neither their take on it, nor anyone else's, has to be taken as gospel. The blog author was merely attempting to present some information and stimulate discussion. Perhaps the linkages among climate change policy, land use, and land-based energy production should have taken on a greater emphasis in the short space allotted in the original blog post.

So what I am understanding is that they are not taking into account that land can be dual or multi purpose in use? Or that using what is presently unused or unusable land is not taking away from anything?

As just one example I've seen 'official' reports stating that wind power is very wasteful usage of land based on the reasoning that every wind generator is spaced roughly 1/2 mile from the next and that a 200 unit wind farm takes up 50 square miles of good land. Well yes they do take up that much land but what these reports don't look at is that normal farming and ranching operations go on underneath them with no real losses or inconvenience but rather with additional financial gains for the land owners. So 50 square miles of farm land are not actually lost to a single wind farm but rather became more productive by being used for multiple functions.

The dual use or multi purpose aspect of land usage often gets tossed out in these types of reports to make their numbers seem so much more imposing and harmful sounding in order to scare dimwits and eco tards into a panic.

Their (Nature Conservancy) point is to underscore how much new land will have to be put into energy production service without implementation of energy conservation, cap-and-trade, and other policies they advocate. But I see your point, as I am not of the ranks of eco-tard-dom.