Iowans not buying into ‘energy sprawl’ argument

A shift toward greener energy sources will fuel U.S. “energy sprawl,” taking up as much land as Nebraska by 2030, reports the Nature Conservancy.

A report last year by the conservancy, a respected natural lands preservation group, has added fuel to the simmering debate over policy choices to deal with climate change. Among its more debated findings: Nuclear power takes up the least land for the amount of energy produced, and renewable fuels, like wind power or ethanol, take up the most.

Although the report has been out for months, it's attracted little attention in Iowa, where state government's emphasis on leadership in renewable energy hasn't included much research on how it will impact the land.

One possible reason: Iowa has little natural wildlife habitat left, after conversion to row crops.

“If only they'd posted this report in the 1860s,” said Nathaniel Baer, energy program director for the Iowa Environmental Council.

Baer nevertheless praised the report's support for energy-efficiency, proper siting of energy facilities and locating energy production close to end users.

Advocates for the biofuels industry have for years rankled at criticism of “indirect land impacts,” particularly claims that biofuels such as ethanol are causing deforestation in other countries.

The argument holds that taking existing grain production out of the human food chain and putting it into biofuels causes huge demand for cropland that will be satisfied by deforestation elsewhere.

Roughly half of Iowa's corn production now goes toward ethanol, said Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association.

Shaw said the biofuels argument “ignores what's going on in the world today,” with higher grain prices allowing less-advanced agricultural markets to boost productivity with better seed genetics and agricultural practices, rather than taking up more land.

Productivity gains allowed the biofuels industry to develop in Iowa without causing a shortage of grain for the human food chain, Shaw said. After subtracting the amount of grain sold to ethanol refineries, Shaw said, Iowa produces as much grain for human food as it did in 1980 on less cropland and exports a similar amount of grain for human consumption.

The Nature Conservancy report didn't look at biofuels' indirect land impacts, either in the United States or other countries. It still found growing ethanol from corn has a land-use impact about 145 times greater than nuclear energy and biodiesel from soybeans has a land-use impact about 373 times higher than nuclear power.

Nuclear energy advocate Phil Wise of Keokuk said the report's land-use findings about nuclear power are “not only accurate, but just common sense.”

“The most electricity for the least impact on the land is a nuclear power plant,” said the former state representative and member of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, who added that the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo would be the ideal place for the state's second nuclear reactor.

Julian Boggs, field associate for Environment Iowa, counters that nuclear power, besides being dangerous and expensive, depends on uranium mining. That mining threatens the Grand Canyon and other natural areas, Boggs said.

Much of the debate around the report has been of its assumptions regarding how much land each form of energy requires.

The report indicates wind energy's land-use impact is about 30 times that of nuclear, but bases that on 50 acres of land disturbed for every megawatt of wind-energy capacity installed.

The actual “footprint” of the wind turbines are only 2 percent to 5 percent of the total, according to the American Wind Energy Association, and the remaining land can still be used for livestock, row crops or habitat for many kinds of wildlife.

Rob McDonald, lead researcher on the report, said in a blog post that the Nature Conservancy is not against renewable-energy generation and that he understands land use is only one consideration policymakers should be considering in deciding on energy policy.