Alexander unveiled his nuclear plan in July.One of the few Congressional Republicans who talks about the need to address climate change, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, made an interesting argument against wind and solar energy this week. He’s concerned about the amount of land required to produce energy from wind and solar, writing in the Wall Street Journal, “I fear we are going to destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment.”

He draws on a recent study by Nature Conservancy scientists who detail how much land is required to produce energy from different sources, an issue they dub “energy sprawl.” Alexander focuses on a small part of their findings—that wind and solar plants require a good deal more physical space than nuclear plants:

It’s a disingenuous argument, because the problem with nuclear power has never been land use. (See Radioactive Waste Disposal, Cost, and Security for more on the very difficult nuclear question.) I’m not arguing here that Alexander’s dead wrong in his long-standing love for nuclear energy, just that this is a thin argument for nuclear.

Oh, and Alexander says he won't support a cap-and-trade climate bill unless it includes his personal wish for 100 new nuke plants.

Bonus second point: If you’re an environmentalist who cares about endangered species and wild places, you shouldn’t be concerned about wind farms or solar plants. You should worry about biofuels.

At least, I’m having a hard time avoiding that conclusion after looking at a key graphic from the energy sprawl report:

Courtesy PLoS ONE

The chart measures the land required per unit (terawatt-hour) of electricity from different sources. Note that the top five sources are all for biofuels, derived from different crops. Note how much less land wind, solar voltaic and solar thermal energy require in comparison.

I won’t rehash the economic and ecological problems with biofuels here, but this should cool off the notion that wind and solar won’t fly for land-use reasons. Of course some places are more sensitive than others, but if there’s room for mountaintop removal coal mining, we have room for wind and solar plants.

There’s a certain man-bites-dog appeal in stories about environmentalists who oppose clean energy projects because they disrupt wild places and endangered species. Take the conflict over solar panels and transmission lines in the Mojave Desert. Or the quarrel over the Cape Wind project at Nantucket Sound. Or the fight over wind turbines in the Flint Hills of Kansas.

These conflicts are intriguing, sure. But the sprawl study, which appeared in PLoS ONE, the online journal of the Public Library of Science, suggests that biofuels such as ethanol pose a far greater threat to open lands.

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Hola, amigos y amigas.  I write to you from Spain.  I’m here courtesy of the Catalan government, who brought me in to explain the California solar market to local solar companies. 

Why does Spain care about California?  Spanish solar companies are going through a really difficult time right now.  Briefly, the story goes like this.  The country established a standard offer contract (aka feed-in tariff) for solar at a very lucrative level, resulting in somewhere around 1000% growth over the previous year.  Upwards of 3 GW of photovoltaics were installed in 2008, instead of the 300 MW they were expecting.  The Spanish government, concerned about the cost, shut the program down, then capped the 2009 program at 500 MW--with much of that effectively filled by carryover from projects begun last year.  New applications end up in a queue, and there’s not much activity in the way of new project development.  I spoke with one company that did 100 million euros in revenue last year.  This year, they are down to 5 employees.  It’s really sad.  Hence, Spain’s interest in learning about new markets.

On a happier note, I took a side trip to Sanlucar la Mayor, near Sevilla, to tour Abengoa’s big solar facility.  Holy moly.  Muy impressive. 

I’ve posted some pictures here. 

Most of what you see are power towers.  This is a solar thermal electric technology that uses a field of heliostats (mirrors) to focus the sun’s rays on a receiver, heat water, produce steam, spin a turbine, and thereby make electricity.  It’s a promising technology in that it can achieve significantly higher temperatures than parabolic troughs (which, as they are less photogenic, don’t feature as prominently in the photoset, though the site has 50 MW essentially installed, and another 150 MW more due to come online soon) and higher temperatures mean lower costs.

What’s harder to see but in many ways more important is the energy storage technologies on site.  The towers currently are capable of storing steam for a half hour—reducing power fluctuations due to weather conditions.  But even more exciting is that one of the parabolic trough lines has a molten salt storage system, which provides for upwards of 6 hours of storage.  As intermittency and non-dispatchability are significant challenges when it comes to increasing our reliance on renewables, this is a very big deal.  I walked away feeling very impressed—and comforted—by Abengoa’s commitment to R&D.  Unless you think clean coal is going to save us--and I don't--this represents real hope in the fight against global warming.

Also, the tapas are fantastic.  The pimentos de padron and sardines and jamon iberico...gluttony has its own rewards.

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A year or so ago, I spoke at a solar conference in France -- a country that produces 78 percent of its electricity with nukes. A couple of folks told me that the government's interest in solar stemmed from the fact that during the previous summer's heat wave, river levels dropped to the point that they didn't have enough water to cool the reactors. The country actually had to shut off generation exactly at peak demand. Big problem. Thus, solar photovoltaics, which not only generate most during these peak events, but also ... use no water.

A Wall Street Journal blog flags the water/power problem, but concludes, in that special WSJ way, that this is bad news for efforts to fight climate change:

Note that PV uses no water. Concentrating solar thermal technologies do, but some have the potential for dry cooling, which adds about a penny per kWh, but greatly reduces water usage.

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After growing 19 percent in 2006 and 62 percent in 2007, world solar photovoltaic (PV) market installations exploded by 110 percent last year to a staggering 5.95 GW, according to Solarbuzz's Annual Report, Marketbuzz 2009:

And who is the leading producer of PV cells?

Yes, the United States created the solar cell industry and literally launched it into space 50 years ago. And, yes, solar PV is going to be one of the largest job-creating industries of the century, projected to grow "from a $20 billion industry in 2007 to $74 billion by 2017."

And, yes, today America has precisely zero of the top 10 PV plants (down from one last year), with our market share having plummeted in the past decade, as the figure below makes all too painfully clear:

But don't get all friggin' sentimental on me. Think of the few billion dollars U.S. taxpayers saved because:

The fundamental tenets of conservative ideology say that if countries like China and Taiwan and Spain make most of the PV cells, it must be because they have an inherent "comparative" advantage over us. You gotta start reading your Ricardo, people.

Any card-carrying conservative knows that if other countries manage to get millions of their workers' hands dirty actually making stuff, it's only because they are better at it. We're still the brainiacs who invent the technologies first and then wisely save a few pennies of the taxpayer dollars not promoting American technologies into billion-dollar American industries. We've still got all those Internet-related jobs, and it's not like the government had anything to do with that.

So please, all you progressives and enviros out there, stop your whining. The plan is unfolding as it should, indeed as it must. Do not argue with the invisible hand. People will think you're crazy.

Sure those thin films look cool. They seem like something that could generate a lot of jobs for a high-tech, high wage economy.

More seriously, it will be interesting to see whether significant incentives and real requirements for renewable energy at a national level can restore some semblance of U.S. leadership.

Although growth is sure to slow this year, it does seem like PV is make it a real race with the other solar energy, Concentrated solar thermal power Solar Baseload.

Hat tip SET Energy.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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