Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat - Recent Advances and Issues in Environmental Science - page 15

Within the US, the world's largest cumulative polluter of greenhouse gases,
concern over climate change has led to the consideration of a Cap-and-Trade system to
regulate emissions, such as the previously proposed Lieberman-Warner Climate Secu-
rity Act (S. 2191) [9] and the Low Carbon Economy Act (S. 1766) [10]. Major points
of contention in structuring a cap-and-trade system are the feasibility and desirability
of carbon capture and storage (CCS) at coal plants, the creation of new nuclear plants,
and whether to allow international offset programs that permit US companies to meet
obligations abroad [11]. The rules of a cap-and-trade system, as well as technological
advances in energy production and changes in the price of fossil fuels, will affect how
the US generates energy. In this study we take scenarios of a Cap-and-Trade system's
effect on US energy production and evaluate each scenario's impact on habitat due
to energy sprawl. Our scenarios (Figure 1A) are based on the Energy Information
Administration (EIA) forecast of energy production in 2030 [12] under current law
Figure 1. The US energy consumption and total new area impacted. (A) The US energy consumption
in 2006 and under four EIA scenarios. Energy conservation of liquid fuels and electricity, calculated
relative to the Reference Scenario, are shown as negative since they reduce consumption. (B) The
total new area impacted because of development between 2006 and 2030. The new area impacted,
or energy sprawl, is a product of consumption and the land-use intensity values in Figure 3. Energy
conservation is calculated based on a scenario-specific weighted-average of the energy mix.