WSJ.com - Energy 'Sprawl' and the Green Economy

Whether the author is right or wrong about nuclear power, he’s absolutely right that we need to consider the sprawl issue in our environmental debates.

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Energy 'Sprawl' and the Green Economy

 

We're about to destroy the environment in the name of saving it.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar recently announced plans to cover 1,000 square miles of land in Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah with solar collectors to generate electricity. He's also talking about generating 20% of our electricity from wind. This would require building about 186,000 50-story wind turbines that would cover an area the size of West Virginia not to mention 19,000 new miles of high-voltage transmission lines.

This "sprawl" has been missing from our energy discussions.

The 1,000 square-mile solar project proposed by Mr. Salazar would generate, on a continuous basis, 35,000 megawatts of electricity. You could get the same output from 30 new nuclear reactors that would fit comfortably onto existing nuclear sites.

Renewable energy is not a free lunch. It is an unprecedented assault on the American landscape.