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November 16th, 2009

Alternative Power Facilities Consume Land, Provide Valuable Resources  


The alternative power facility footprint is becoming an increasing concern in regards to utility-scale installations. Acres of solar panels and wind turbines are being labeled as excessive in comparison to traditional coal or natural gas facilities. Comparatively speaking, the total energy source and its benefits should be looked at rather than the visible structures. A large facility that consumes a vast amount of land can sometimes overshadow the true value of the resources it captures. Taking into consideration land usage vs. cleaner energy — Which power source really has the bigger footprint?

2 Comments

While it is true that solar and wind farms consume a large amount of land per kW or MW of plant, coal and natural gas also do -- not so much in the area of the plant itself, but in the mining. Mountaintop removal coal mines in West Virginia and surrounding states are an especially large offender, but even natural gas wells have a not insignificant footprint in western Colorado. Also, for wind farms especially, they don't really "consume" the land -- many wind farms continue to have ranching or farming underneath them with minimal loss of land to the other uses. So, while the farm takes up alot of area, it really doesn't take much of it away from the previous use.

Another consideration with photovoltaic solar plants is because of their modular nature and rather low economies of scale from going from distributed generation to central plants, they are ideally suited to being mounted on structures that already exist -- houses, commercial buildings, warehouses, shade over parking lots... where again, it is not taking extra land area. As a comparison, we have already covered more land area in freeways in the US than would be required to provide all of our needs with solar energy.

November 17th, 2009 // By Zeke Yewdall

The American Wind Energy Association estimates that it would take an area of wind farms the 1/6 the size of Montana to provide 20% of the energy used in the United States. 90% of that area would still be available for other uses, such as farming or ranching.
That means that the "foot-print" of enough wind farm power to provide ALL of of America's power needs with wind would take up an area 1/12 the size of Montana, to the exclusion of other uses. As back-up we could use the oil and gas drilling rigs that would be idled to drill intersecting holes to the depth that provides enough geothermal heat to produce hot water or steam to drive generators. That can be done in most areas of the Earth's crust.
Those sources of energy are inexhaustible, non-polluting, low-cost, and do not take up much space. They also cost A LOT less than Nuclear power plants, and don't produce deadly nuclear waste, which we are already overloaded with; and there is no place to store it for the hundreds of thousands of years it will take it to become non-toxic.
Uranium is an exhaustible resource, and the waste heat from nuclear plants negates their lack of CO2 Emissions, as a reducer of climate change.

February 25th, 2010 // By William McDavid

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