Renewable energy is one of the most promoted environmental changes and promises of our time- the idea that we can trade in our dependence on fossil fuels and harness clean, renewable, or sustainable energies to actually create more useful and less damaging energy is perhaps the grandest and most attainable promise of our generation. While there are plenty of arguments over the degree to which each of the green fuels or energy sources is effective or green, there are seldom arguments made about how damaging some kind of green fuel is to the environment it claims to aid.

The closest example I can think of is ethanol, where there are many arguments that the energy it takes to create and transport makes it not very green at all, and in fact, makes is damage the environment by pushing farmers to grow more and more corn to feed the rising demand- thereby creating monocultures and damaging valuable farmland.

Damage to land is a similar argument being made by some against other clean and renewable energies in a recent article from Nature News. A new study completed this week form PLoS ONE1 finds that the U.S. will need millions of hectares to support the energy needs in the United States over the next 20 years. This kind of energy need increase will be damaging to the habitat around the country, both for taking up so much land and for the resource demands of actually growing the crops. The study finds that if unchecked, crops like corn that are used for ethanol could have the largest impact on landscape and habitats.  

The study analyzed possible U.S. energy and climate change- battling possibilities, from biofuel options to nuclear, and concluded that whether the Waxman-Markey bill passes, somewhere between 21 and 70 million hectares will be needed in the next 20 years. 21 million hectares is like the size of Wyoming- which means 70 million is like the size of, well, 3 and a half Wyomings.
Robert McDonald, author of the study, said:

"A cap-and-trade bill may have some incremental effect in increasing energy sprawl, but most of the development that's going to happen is because of other laws that are already in place."

That means that we will have to deal with this issue. The laws he is referring to require that renewable fuel blended into gasoline must quadruple to 136 billion liters by 2022, and that alone will require a minimum of 19 hectares, according to the study’s estimation.None of that kind of land use requirement matches with the relatively low amount of money set aside to fund it.

This is an interesting and poignant angle that emphasizes how little we really know about how to battle climate change- as in, we still have a lot of mistakes to make. Sure, we can dig up less dead stuff from underground and not burn it, using instead fresh crops- but what is the cost both monetarily as well as in land used? The projections in this study are sobering and point to how little long-term thinking anyone has really done about battling climate change.

"If we are to prevent serious, damaging climate change, it will require one of the largest land-use changes in the history of the country. Because the change is so big, it's important that we do it carefully to minimize the environmental impacts of these new energy resources," says Jimmie Powell, policy expert at the Nature Conservancy and co-author of the study.