Solar Energy Vs. Mountaintop Removal

by: Clem Guttata

Fri Dec 28, 2007 at 08:11:09 AM EST

By 2012, mountaintop removal will consume 2,200 square miles of the best land in the Eastern US, an area the size of Delaware. That's 2,200 sq miles of the East Coast rivers' headwaters, and the mine waste will send poisons through the nations water supplies from the Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico for centuries to come. It's not sustainable - that land won't give any more energy, food, or water ever again.

Only one small quibble with what bernardpliers said. That flat land left by mountain top removal could produce energy as a small solar farm. ;-) Of course, the original taller mountain probably would have made a better wind energy site, but I digress...

Basically, a solar farm the size of Sicily would provide electricity for the entire EU. An area the size of Ireland would power the entire world.

This seems like a lot of land, but remember, we are already on our way to strip mining an area the size of Delaware and it will just keep getting larger and larger. The amount of area we are strip mining for coal continues to grow, our watersheds are being devastated and the damage is permanent. A similar fate is in store for the Rockies in pursuit of oil shale. These areas are slated for permanent destruction on the scale of a nuclear war.

It's tough to compare the projected costs of different technologies, and the hidden cost of fossil fuels is rarely included. But when you look at the area of land permanently destroyed for a jolt of fossil fuels that only supplies part of our needs,  versus the area for solar energy to supply all our energy, it becomes a lot clearer. A picture is worth a thousand words, and if its CSP (concentrated solar power) versus mountaintop removal, solar is going to be the clear winner.

With technology advances in solar collectors -- nanotechnology production techniques, for example -- land requirements for solar may be greatly reduced. Unfortunately, there are no similar technology improvements on the horizon for coal mining.