The quake caused a nuclear disaster. So Masayoshi Son, the boss of Softbank, a big mobile operator, believes it is time to rethink Japan’s dependence on nuclear power. He is talking to around 20 prefectures about building ten solar-power plants. Converting one-fifth of Japan’s unused farmland to solar would generate 50 gigawatts, he says, which is equivalent to the peak output of TEPCO, Japan’s largest electricity firm (and a quasi-monopoly).

Those of us who support renewables find ourselves in a difficult position: demanding the industrialisation of the countryside, supporting new power stations, new power lines and (for the electricity storage required) new reservoirs. Even offshore power, whose landscape impacts are much smaller, means more grid connections and more storage.

“Ethanol is difficult to scale up to become a major gasoline substitute. Ethanol production requires a large amount of corn to produce relatively little gasoline. Ethanol production requires 2.8 bushels of corn per gallon of ethanol. At present, approximately 25% of US grown corn produces 7 billion gallons, or 3.3% of the energy content of gasoline (and only 1.5% of all US finished oil products) consumed in the US. If the entire corn crop was used to produce ethanol, it would only offset 6% of total US oil consumption.”

Downey, Morgan. Oil 101. p.193 hardcover

Biodiesel

“It takes about 7.3 pounds of soybean oil to produce one gallon of B100 biodiesel. Soybean oil is the most commonly produced oil in the US with approximately 17 billion pounds of soybean oil currently produced each year… If the entire US soybean oil production was diverted to replace middle distillate then it could only replace 13 days of current annual US distillate demand. One has to be realistic, therefore, about the current capacity of soybean oil production and accept that biodiesel is not a realistic alternative for mass scale implementation.”

Downey, Morgan. Oil 101. p.213-214 hardcover

A new graph, showing countries’ power per unit area

Conclusion: All countries whose power consumption per unit area is bigger than 0.1 W/m2 are countries who should expect renewable facilities to occupy a significant intrusive fraction of their country, if they ever want to live on their own renewables. Countries with a power consumption per unit area bigger than 1 W/m2 (eg UK, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Belgium) would have to industrialize most of their countryside, if they want to live on their own renewables. Alternatively, their options are to radically reduce consumption, use nuclear power, and/or to buy renewable power in from other countries.

Photo

The 600 km by 600 km square in North America, completely filled with concentrating solar power, would provide enough power to give 500 million people the average American’s consumption of 250 kWh/d.

THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2009

STANFORD, CA – Biofuels such as ethanol offer an alternative to petroleum for powering our cars, but growing energy crops to produce them can compete with food crops for farmland, and clearing forests to expand farmland will aggravate the climate change problem. How can we maximize our “miles per acre” from biomass? Researchers writing in the online edition of the May 7 Science magazine say the best bet is to convert the biomass to electricity, rather than ethanol. They calculate that, compared to ethanol used for internal combustion engines, bioelectricity used for battery-powered vehicles would deliver an average of 80% more miles of transportation per acre of crops, while also providing double the greenhouse gas offsets to mitigate climate change.

Extreme environmental recklessness
December 12, 2008

Certainly, make kings have become masters of all they survey before they were ready. And it didn’t always end well…

As Sarah points out, there are also opportunities for renewable energy with a fairly small footprint. For instance, there is offshore wind and the possibility of adding wind turbines to areas that are productive in other ways (say, agriculturally). Run-of-river hydro probably falls into this category as well. I don’t think the hydro station between my home and work has caused any significant enlargement of the Ottawa River.