Recent Nature Conservancy Study Looks at Clean Energy Sprawl

Should Hawaii reconsider its energy policy, which seems to focus on biomass and ethanol? Has there been a critical assessment of how particular alternative energy solutions will impact Hawaii's environment?

In a recent article by the Nature Conservancy--McDonald RI, Fargione J, Kiesecker J, Miller WM, Powell J, Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America, August 26, 2009--the authors investigate land-use impacts to U.S. habitat types of new energy development resulting from different U.S. energy policies. Also referred to by the authors as, "the habitat impact of future energy sprawl." Id. at 1.

The study found that biodiesel from soy had 20 times the impact of petroleum on land-use intensity for energy production. See Id. at Fig. 3, p. 4. In addition, the impacts of the following compared to petroleum are:

• electricity from biomass, 12.2 times
• ethanol from cellulose, 10.2 times
• ethanol from corn, 7.8 times
• ethanol from sugarcane, 6.4 times
• wind, 1.6 times
• hydro-power, 1.2 times

The impact from solar photovoltaic, natural gas, solar thermal, coal, geothermal, and nuclear power all have less of an impact than petroleum. Id.

The impact on land may be compounded by indirect and secondary impacts, which the authors discussed as follows:

Energy crop production is a particularly complex situation because even if new energy crop production occurs on land that was previously in agricultural production, remaining global demand for agricultural commodities may spur indirect effects on land-use elsewhere, potentially causing an agricultural expansion in areas far from the location of energy crop production. Other energy production techniques have a relatively small infrastructure footprint and a larger area impacted by habitat fragmentation and other secondary effects on wildlife. A review of the literature found that production techniques that involve wells like geothermal, natural gas, and petroleum have about 5% of their impact area affected by direct clearing while 95% of their impact area is from fragmenting habitats and species avoidance behavior. Wind turbines have a similar figure of about 3–5% of their impact area affected by direct clearing while 95–97% of their impact area is from fragmenting habitats, species avoidance behavior, and issues of bird and bat mortality. Id.

The study suggests four ways to achieve emissions reduction while avoiding energy sprawl: (1) energy conservation to reduce the new energy needed by the U.S.; (2) policy that encourages end-use generation of energy; (3) a flexible cap-and-trade bill allowing for carbon capture and storage at coal plants, new nuclear plants, and international offsets; and (4) appropriate site selection and planning for energy development, e.g., siting in already disturbed places. Id. at 6.

For more on energy issues, see Energy.

How Walkable is Your Community?

Here is a neat web application, Walk Score by Front Seat, a self-described "civic software company and incubator" based in Seattle, Washington.

Point your browser to www.walkscore.com, enter your address, and the site will figure out how walkable your community is from your address. My address got a 98 out of a 100, not bad. According to the site,

Your Walk Score is a number between 0 and 100. Here are general guidelines for interpreting your score:

• 90–100 = Walkers' Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car.
• 70–89 = Very Walkable: It's possible to get by without owning a car.
• 50–69 = Somewhat Walkable: Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car.
• 25–49 = Car-Dependent: Only a few destinations are within easy walking range. For most errands, driving or public transportation is a must.
• 0–24 = Car-Dependent (Driving Only): Virtually no neighborhood destinations within walking range. You can walk from your house to your car!

See How it Works.

Your Walk Score is figured out using an algorithm that measures walkability by the distance amenities are located to a particular address. The closer the amenity, the higher your score--anything beyond a mile receives no points.

Walkability is one of the key considerations of transit oriented development and new urbansim. Read more at Transportation and Planning.

An Alternative View in the Ceded Lands Debate

In October of 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Apology Resolution does not bar the sale of ceded lands (i.e., lands formerly owned by Hawaii's monarchs). See U.S. Supreme Court Holds that Apology Resolution Does not Bar Sale of Ceded Lands.

Such a case allows armchair judges to flex their intellectual muscles, ergo, Professor Jon Van Dyke's book entitled, Who Owns the Crown Lands of Hawai'i?, released in 2008. I recently came across a well thought critique of Professor Van Dyke's book by Paul M. Sullivan, Esq., entitled, A Very Durable Myth: A Critical Commentary on Jon Van Dyke's Who Owns the Crown Lands of Hawai'i?, 31 U. Haw. L. Rev. 341 (2008).

Sullivan's primary critique is that Professor Van Dyke's book presents the ceded lands issue as a legal question, "Who Owns the Crown Lands of Hawai'i?" However, what Professor Van Dyke is really doing is advocating for, in Sullivan's words, "Who should own Hawai'i's Crown Lands?" Sullivan's critique is summarized by the following excerpt:

[W]hile the book speaks much of law and history, it advocates a political change. One might grumble that it lacks the rigorous discipline and balance of a legal treatise or a work of historical scholarship, but that is not the book's purpose, and its real shortcoming is not that it is unscholarly, but that its advocacy does not withstand probing examination. What the book proposes is a giveaway of state and federal public property in a race-conscious manner in order to radically change a 160 year old race-neutral land reform program with which the United States had nothing to do, conducted by a foreign government-the Kingdom of Hawai'i-pursuant to its own validly-enacted laws, which achieved very legitimate objectives for the kingdom and its populace largely through the benevolent supervision of a visionary monarch. Professor Van Dyke's book simply does not show that either the federal government or the State of Hawai'i has any reason or any authority to pursue such an endeavor.

The book does show that there was some unfairness in the kingdom's original division of its lands, but this unfairness consisted for the most part of individual acts of misfeasance, fraud or favoritism, both by native leaders and some immigrants, contrary to the law of the kingdom, toward individual claimants or groups of claimants and had nothing to do with the racial background or ancestry of any of the participants or any action or inaction by the United States. It also shows that nearly all of the lands distributed in the original partition went into native hands (noble or commoner), and while a significant part eventually found its way thence, over time, into the hands of American and European immigrants, a great part of the most valuable of lands of the kingdom remains under Native Hawaiian control today. Ironically, it even shows that contrary to the book's own thesis, Native Hawaiians do not have and never had any valid claim to the Crown Lands or other ceded lands, before or after the termination of the monarchy in 1893.

Sullivan's critique is concise, to the point, and a welcome addition to the debate.

See Ceded Lands for more on this topic.