Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Land-use Intensity of Energy Production
The land-use intensity of different energy production techniques (i.e., the inverse of
power density [16, 17]), as measured in km
2
of impacted land in 2030 per terawatt-
hour per year, varies over three orders of magnitude (Figure 3). Nuclear power (1.9-
2.8 km
2
/TW hr/yr), coal (2.5-17.0 km
2
/TW hr/yr), and geothermal (1.0-13.9 km
2
/TW
hr/yr) are the most compact by this metric. Conversely, biofuels (e.g., for corn ethanol
320-375 km
2
/TW hr/yr) and biomass burning of energy crops for electricity (433-654
km
2
/TW hr/yr) take the most space per unit power. Most renewable energy production
techniques, like wind and solar power, have intermediate values of this metric.
Figure 3.
Land-use intensity for energy production/conservation techniques. Value shown is for 2030,
as measured in km
2
of impacted area in 2030 per terawatt-hour produced/conserved in that year.
Error bars show the most-compact and least-compact estimates of plausible current and future levels
of land-use intensity. Numbers provided are the midpoint between the high and low estimates for
different techniques. For liquid fuels, energy loss from internal combustion engines is not included
in this calculation.
Energy conservation can reduce overall energy consumption thus reducing the
area impacted by energy development. For every TW hour decrease in annual electric
power consumption, a weighted-average of electricity use under the Reference Scenario
suggests 7.6-28.7 km
2
of avoided impact. The corresponding fi gure for liquid fuels
(27.5-99.3 km
2
of avoided impact per TW hr/yr) is higher because of the relatively
large land-use intensity of biofuels.
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