(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The liberal college town of Amherst, Massachusetts, is considering a ban on new large-scale solar projects that’s supported by, among other groups, the local chapter of the supposedly radical youth climate movement Sunrise.
It’s the latest in a long list of unfortunate instances in which renewable-energy projects have faced opposition not from coal barons or reactionaries, but from progressive types concerned about the land-use impacts of big new energy projects. The National Audubon Society is trying to stop a wind project near Oakland, California, for example, and local Audubon chapters are frequently in opposition to this or that clean-energy project.
What’s more, the U.S. environmental review process allows anyone to invoke environmental concerns to block something they don’t like, regardless of the actual reason. It’s difficult to believe that advocates of offshore oil drilling are sincerely upset about the impact of offshore wind projects on the marine ecology, for example, but they are free to raise that objection. What could have been America’s largest solar farm was canceled last year in Nevada due to a variety of NIMBY (not in my back yard) objections.
These stories are often cited as examples of environmental hypocrisy, to make the left look bad. And certainly there are cases where the NIMBYs are just wrong. Last fall’s defeat of a proposed power line that would have brought Quebec hydropower through Maine into Massachusetts was a genuine disaster, with a small number of forest-protectors serving as useful idiots for fossil-fuel interests. More North American grid integration is critical to the clean-energy transition because Canadian hydropower can balance solar intermittency: America can send electricity north when the sun is shining and the Canadians can let water pile up behind their dams to generate power for when the sun goes down.
That being said, each fight over the site of a renewable project underscores a powerful reality: Decarbonizing the electric grid purely through new wind and solar will require an enormous amount of land. According to the Net Zero America Project, to fully electrify America’s vehicles, buildings and factories — and then produce all that electricity through renewables — would require land five times the area of South Dakota.
This isn’t necessarily impossible. But it’s not possible without infringing on a lot of woodlands, habitats, nice views and other things that reasonable people are going to want to fight to preserve.
Which is another reason that environmental groups should be more open to the idea of geothermal and advanced nuclear power. Senator Jim Risch and Representative Russ Fulcher, both of Idaho, have introduced a bill that would grant geothermal projects located on federal land the same categorical exemption from the environmental-review process that oil and gas projects currently enjoy.
Environmental groups have largely opposed this on the theory that the U.S. should be making it harder to drill for fossil fuels, not easier to drill for geothermal heat. And they’re not necessarily wrong. Drilling holes in the ground is not generally an ecologically friendly activity, whether those holes are for the purpose of fossil-fuel extraction or something else.
But amid all these debates and controversies over utility-scale solar, offshore wind and new high-voltage transmission lines, one point is clear: Every conceivable option incurs some tradeoffs. A geothermal project can generate the same amount of power on a much smaller plot compared to a wind or solar project.
The arguments over the role of nuclear power in creating zero-carbon electricity are familiar. But there has been relatively little debate over the impact on land use. On a per-megawatt basis, a utility-scale solar project takes up about 80 times as much space as a conventional light-water nuclear plant. A wind plant, when considering the spacing of the turbines, requires over twice as much space as a solar one.
Meanwhile, a new generation of entrepreneurs is hoping to bring to market a new generation of much smaller nuclear reactors that will be even more space efficient.
These micro-reactors generate less power than existing mega-reactors. But the promise of micro-reactors is that, because they are smaller, they are easier to cool. The Aurora reactor design from Oklo, for example, is cooled with a series of static metal rods rather than water pumps that require their own redundant power sources for safety. If the reactor overheats, the nuclear fuel will expand, reducing its density and ending the reaction.
The micro-reactor industry’s unproven claim is that the smaller scale of these designs will allow them to be mass-produced more cheaply. Environmentalists who oppose new nuclear developments have seized on this claim — and it is speculative, whereas the cheapness of wind and solar power is a present-day reality.
Cost issues aside, however, the smaller footprint of micro-reactors is a huge advantage. If they also prove to be affordable, they could provide an enormous supply of zero-carbon electricity that creates many fewer conflicts about open space. Instead of needing five South Dakotas, we’d be looking at half a New Hampshire. And because reactors can be located near where the power is needed, there’d be less need for new transmission lines.
At the moment, the world is so far from meeting its clean-energy goals that it’s an everything-including-the-kitchen-sink situation. In the short term, that means supporting as much solar and wind power as we can build; promoting renewable power is more important than saving trees and birds (who happen to be facing very serious climate impacts, by the way). In the medium term, that means making it easier to build advanced nuclear plants such as micro-reactors.
Transforming the American energy system is going to require a lot of new zero-carbon electricity. Trying to find more space-efficient ways to provide it should be a priority.
More From Bloomberg Opinion:
- Abandoning Nuclear Power Would Be Europe’s Biggest Climate Mistake: Jonathan Ford
- The Power Crunch Just Made Renewables Stronger: David Fickling
- The Left’s NIMBY War Against Renewable Energy: Noah Smith
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Matthew Yglesias is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. A co-founder and former columnist for Vox, he is also the author, most recently, of "One Billion Americans."
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.