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Ecological Footprints and Energy

MATHIS WACKERNAGEL and CHAD MONFREDA


Redening Progress Oakland, California, United States

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Ecological Overshoot Conceptual Predecessors of the Ecological Footprint Component- and Compound-Based Approaches Method of National Ecological Footprint Accounting Bioproductive Areas of the Ecological Footprint Fossil Energy Nuclear Energy Renewable Energy Energy Footprint of Preindustrial Society Energy Footprint of Industrial Society

can be used to weight productivity, including agricultural suitability, potential net primary production, and useful biomass extraction.

Glossary
biocapacity The potential productivity of the biologically productive space within a specied country, region, or territory. biologically productive space Areas of land and water capable of supporting photosynthesis at sufcient rates to provide economically useful concentrations of biomass. Marginal and unproductive regions, such as deserts, tundra, and the deep oceans, are excluded. The global biologically productive space totals 11.4 billion ha. ecological decit The amount by which the ecological footprint of a population (e.g., a country or region) exceeds the biocapacity of the space available to that population. ecological footprint A measure of how much biocapacity a population, organization, or process requires to produce its resources and absorb its waste using prevailing technology. ecological overshoot Ecological decit met through the overexploitation of resources or accumulation of waste. William Catton denes the term as growth beyond an areas carrying capacity, leading to crash. embodied energy The energy used during a products entire life cycle for manufacture, transport, operation, and/or disposal. global hectare One hectare of biologically productive space with world-average productivity. productivity A measurement of the potential rate of biological production of a given area. Various indicators

The ecological footprint is a measurement that compares rates of human resource consumption and waste generation with the biospheres rates of resource regeneration and waste assimilation, expressed in terms of the area necessary to maintain these ows. Ecological footprints represent the biologically productive space required to produce the resources and absorb the wastes of a given population, organization, or product using prevailing management and technology.

1. ECOLOGICAL OVERSHOOT
The nature of ecological limits may be one of the most inuential misconceptions of the sustainability debate. A former executive director of the United Nations (UN) Population Fund stated that many environmentalists think [that the carrying capacity of Earth] is 4 billion, maximum. But now we have 6 billion people. The continued growth of the human population and resource consumption, however, is only an apparent contradiction. In reality, ecological limits can be exceeded for a period of time because nature reacts with inertia. More precisely, natural capital can be harvested faster than it regenerates, thereby depleting the natural capital stock. Ecologists call this state overshoot. The concept of overshoot reconciles the apparently contradictory assertions that standards of living are waxing while ecological capacity is waning. Nevertheless, uncertainties remain regarding the possible impacts of prolonged overshoot. Some fear that unsustainable harvests will trigger the sudden collapse of ecosystems, leaving sheries and other dynamic resource stocks irreversibly damaged.

Encyclopedia of Energy, Volume 2. r 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Ecological Footprints and Energy

Others hope that the contraction of ecosystem services will be slower and more forgiving. The delayed effects of overshoot and difculty of valuing ecosystem services prevent markets and uninformed policy from forming corrective feedback mechanisms. Without adequate feedback mechanisms, such as systematic accounting that compares human demands on nature with natures capacity to regenerate, overshoot can go unnoticed, thereby undermining humanitys future. Industrial economies in particular can exceed sustainable limits by masking resource depletion and decreasing energy returns on investment with technological advances, inexpensive energy, and easy access to distant resources. Particularly on the waste side, feedback is weak: CO2 from fossil fuel burning leaves tailpipes with ease, independent of the increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. No national government or UN agency operates a comprehensive accounting system to document the extent to which human demands t within the capacity of existing ecosystems. The ecological footprint is one of the few tools that attempts integrated resource accounting. The purpose of ecological footprints is not only to illustrate the possibility of overshoot but also to offer a robust tool to demonstrate its occurrence. As a resource accounting tool, it can help determine who is contributing, and how much, to the overall impact of humanity. Most important, it can evaluate potential strategies for avoiding overshoot.

of natures limited capacity to provide for human demands. Formal ecological accounting dates to 1758, when Francois Quesnay published Tableau Economique, which captures the relationship between land productivity and wealth creation. Intellectual groundwork for more recent studies was laid in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly through George Borgstroms concept of ghost acreage, Howard Odums energy analyses, and Jay Forresters model on world resource dynamics presented in Donella Meadows et al.s Limits to Growth report to the Club of Rome in 1972. Natural capital accounts focused on regional and global limits are increasingly prominent in the political debate. Peter Vitouseks 1986 landmark study, Human Appropriation of the Products of Photosynthesis, compiled consumption data to determine the human economys draw on terrestrial net primary productivity. Based on 1980s data, the study estimates that humanity co-opts 40% of the photosynthetic materials produced by terrestrial ecosystems, excluding the photosynthesis that assimilates fossil fuel emissions and other anthropogenic waste. Fischer-Kowalski and Hu ttler used material ow analysis to advance measurements of societal metabolism, a macroindicator of the environmental performance of societies. The World Resources Institutes biennial World Resources report and the United Nations Environment Programmes (UNEP) Global Environmental Outlook provide detailed documentation of pressures facing global ecosystems but do not contain aggregated impact assessments.

2. CONCEPTUAL PREDECESSORS OF THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT


Biophysical assessments of human dependence on nature date back thousands of years to tales about the relationship between people and land. Records on the concept of carrying capacity trace at least as far back as Platos Laws, Book V, which states that a suitable total for the number of citizens cannot be xed without considering the land and the neighboring states. The land must be extensive enough to support a given number of people in modest comfort, and not a foot more is needed. The rst scholarly book in English on sustainable resource use may have been John Evelyns 1664 Sylva: A Discourse of Forest Trees and the Propagation of Timber. In North America, George Perkins Marshs widely read 1864 study, Man and Nature, was inuential in increasing the awareness

3. COMPONENT- AND COMPOUND-BASED APPROACHES


There are two basic ecological footprinting methods: component- and compound-based. The rst calculates the footprint of individual goods or organizations. This bottom-up, component-based method rst identies all relevant items and then assesses the ecological footprint of each item using life-cycle data. The overall accuracy of the nal result depends on the completeness of the component list as well as the reliability of the life-cycle assessment (LCA) of each identied component. This approach provides a high level of detail but has limitations due to LCAs frequent inaccuracies, incompleteness, and poorly dened boundaries. The component-based method also has difculty with data gaps and indirect expenditures outside of an organizations inventories, such as public infrastructure and military.

Ecological Footprints and Energy

The compound-based method uses a top-down approach to aggregate economic and environmental statistics into national ecological footprints. Compound footprinting, which underlies the national results presented in this article, calculates the ecological footprint using aggregate national data. This information is more complete than subnational sources and LCAs and captures both direct and indirect consumption. For instance, to calculate the paper footprint of a country, information about the total amount consumed is typically available and sufcient for the task. In contrast to the component method, there is no need to know which portions of the overall paper consumption were used for which purposes, aspects that are poorly documented in statistical data collections.

In order to provide a quantitative answer to the research question of how much regenerative capacity is required to maintain a given resource ow, ecological footprint accounts use a methodology grounded on six assumptions: 1. It is possible to use annual national statistics to track resource consumption and waste generation for most countries. 2. Resource ows can be measured in terms of the bioproductive area necessary for their regeneration and the assimilation of their waste. (Resource and waste ows that cannot be measured are excluded from the assessment.) 3. Bioproductive areas of different productivity can be expressed in a common unit of standardized usable biological productivity. Usable refers to the portion of biomass used by humans, reecting the anthropocentric assumptions of the footprint measurement. 4. The sum of mutually exclusive areas needed to maintain resource ows expressed in a common unit represents aggregate demand; the sum of mutually exclusive bioproductive areas expressed in a common unit represents aggregate supply. 5. Human demand (footprint) and natures supply (biocapacity) are directly comparable. 6. Area demand can exceed area supply, meaning that activities can stress natural capital beyond its regenerative capacity. For example, the products from a forest harvested at twice its regeneration rate have a footprint twice the size of the forest. A footprint greater than biocapacity indicates ecological decit. Ecological decits are compensated in two ways: Either the decit is balanced through imports (ecological trade decit) or the decit is met through overuse of domestic resources, leading to natural capital depletion (ecological overshoot). Cropland, forests, pastures, and sheries vary in biological productivity, or their capacity to provide ecological goods and services through photosynthesis. One hectare of arid rangeland, for example, has less capacity to recycle nutrients, produce food, and support diverse land-use patterns than one hectare of temperate forest. The ecological footprint therefore normalizes each bioproductive areacropland, pasture, forests, built-up land, and sheriesinto common units of global hectares (gha). Current accounts weight productivity according to agricultural suitabilitya function of numerous factors, including temperature, precipitation, soils, and slope. The Food and Agriculture Organization and International Institute for Applied Systems

4. METHOD OF NATIONAL ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT ACCOUNTING


National ecological footprint accounts consist of two measurements. The footprint aggregates the total area a given population, organization, or process requires to produce food, ber, and timber; provide space for infrastructure; and sustain energy consumption. The biocapacity aggregates the total area available to supply these demands. The ecological footprint focuses on six potentially renewable demands: cropland, pasture, forests, builtup land, sheries, and energy. Activities in these components are deemed sustainable if rates of resource use and waste generation do not exceed a dened limit that the biosphere can support without degrading the resource stock. By including a core set of potentially sustainable activities, the ecological footprint denes minimum conditions for sustainability. The results underestimate human impact and overestimate the available biocapacity by counting each footprint component only once if multiple demands come from the same area; choosing the more conservative footprint estimates and more optimistic biocapacity estimates when in doubt; and including agricultural practices as if they would not cause longterm damage to soil productivity. The accounts also exclude activities for which there is insufcient data or understanding, such as acid deposition. Activities that systematically erode natures capacity to regenerate are also excluded, including aquifer depletion, soil erosion, and the release of chlorouorocarbons.

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TABLE I

Ecological Footprints and Energy

Global Biocapacitya Equivalence factor (gha/ha) 2.1 0.5 1.3 2.2 0.4 1.0 Global area (billion ha) 1.5 3.5 3.8 0.3 2.3 11.4 Biocapacity (billion gha) 3.2 1.6 5.2 0.6 0.8 11.4

Area Cropland Pasture Forest Built-up land Fisheries Total


a

The relative productivities of major global bioproductive areas, expressed in actual area (hectares) and productivityweighted area (global-hectares). Equivalence factors are based on the suitability index of Global Agro-Ecological Zones 2000 (FAO/ IIASA). Data are rounded.

Analysis have created a spatially explicit distribution of these variables in the suitability index of Global Agro-Ecological Zones 2000. Recent ecological footprint accounts use this index to translate unweighted hectares into global hectares (Table I). Other possibilities for weighting productivity include potential primary production and the rate of economically useful biomass production.

5. BIOPRODUCTIVE AREAS OF THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT


Earth has a surface area of 51.0 billion ha, of which 36.6 billion ha is ocean and inland waters and 14.4 billion is land. Ecological footprint accounts estimate that less than one-fourth of Earths surface9.1 billion ha of land and 2.3 billion ha of water provides sufcient concentrations of economically useful biomass to be considered biologically productive. The 11.4 billion ha of bioproductive area is differentiated into ve components: cropland, pastures, forests, built-up land, and sheries. The remaining 39.6 billion ha is marginally productive or unproductive for human use because it consists of the deep oceans, is covered by ice, or lacks fertile soils and fresh water. Cropland occupies approximately 1.5 billion ha of the most productive land worldwide. Current accounts include 74 crops and 15 secondary products and report details on how food crops are used (waste, seeds, feed, food, and processing), traded, and stored. These numbers document the area dedicated to cultivation and omit impacts from

unsustainable agricultural practices, such as longterm damage from topsoil erosion, salinization, and contamination of aquifers with agrochemicals. Pastures, which cover 3.5 billion ha, supply a substantial part, perhaps half, of the metabolic needs of livestock worldwide. Differing denitions of what constitutes pasture, poorly documented temporal and spatial variations in forage production and quality, and difculties in separating metabolic needs supplied through concentrate feeds, crop residues, and other nonpasture sources make the pasture footprint difcult to determine. Healthy pastures are a critical component of food security, and even a preliminary assessment of their global capacity to support livestock would improve the current dearth of data. Forests provide lumber, pulp, and fuelwood and include both natural forests and plantations. The Food and Agriculture Organizations Forest Resource Assessment 2000 places the total area at 3.8 billion ha. Estimates of timber productivity are derived from the UNs Economic Commission for Europes Temperate and Boreal Forest Resource Assessment 2000 and data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These sources also provide information on plantation type, coverage, timber yield, and areas of protected and economically inaccessible forest. Fisheries are concentrated on a relatively narrow portion of the ocean located on continental shelves. Excluding inaccessible or unproductive waters, these include an estimated 2.0 billion ha. Although a mere fraction of the oceans 36.3 billion ha, this 2.0 billion ha provides 95% of the marine sh catch. Inland waters comprise an additional 0.3 billion ha. Higher trophic-level shspecies high on the food chainconsume a proportionally greater portion of the oceans primary productivity than lower trophiclevel sh. It is estimated that each level up in the food chain translates into a 10-fold increase in demand for photosynthetic production per unit of biomass. Thus, 1 ton of cod at trophic level 4 has a footprint 10 times larger than 1 ton of sardines at trophic level 3. (Trophic level 1 corresponds to photosynthetic species at the base of the food chainthe primary producers.) Built-up land for housing, transportation, industrial production, and capturing hydroelectric power occupies approximately 0.3 billion ha. Built-up land is poorly documented at a global level, partially due to different denitions used in various studies and the difculty of satellites to view smaller objects and linear developments such as roads. However, some

Ecological Footprints and Energy

countries, such as those in the European Union, have more reliable data sets. Current accounts assume that built-up land replaces cropland because most human settlements favor fertile regions well suited for agriculture. Hence, urban expansion encroaches typically on cropland.

6. FOSSIL ENERGY
The footprint of fossil fuels can be assessed by a number of approaches. The question of how much regenerative capacity is required to maintain the throughput of fossil fuel through the human economy can be addressed from three perspectives: absorbing the waste, maintaining the energy supply, and maintaining the resource. While locally signicant, the area required for extraction, solid waste disposal, and power production is comparatively small at 3.2 ha/MW. In contrast, the waste assimilation method places the footprint for carbon emissions from the operation, construction, and maintenance of a typical coal-red facility at 1900 gha/MW and the footprint of a similar-sized natural gas plant at 1050 gha/MW.

6.1 Waste Assimilation Method


The most common method for determining the ecological footprint of fossil fuels is based on the assumption that the primary limitation for fossil fuel use is the biospheres ability to absorb CO2 waste emissions. Following the dictum of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that calls for CO2 stabilization in the atmosphere, the waste assimilation approach estimates how much larger the biosphere would need to be to provide the absorptive services to remove excess carbon emissions. Most accounts calculate this area by estimating the additional forest area required to fully sequester CO2 emitted from the burning of fossil fuels. Of the average annual 6.3 Gt of anthropogenic carbon emitted from fossil fuel combustion and cement production during the 1990s, the ocean absorbed an estimated 1.7 Gt and the land another 1.4 Gt. This imbalance has led to an increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 from a preindustrial level of 280 parts per million (ppm) in 1750 to 370 ppm at the end of the 20th century. Given that carbon has a much shorter residence time in the terrestrial sink than in the oceanic sink, reects prior biomass removal, and is susceptible to re-release from land-use and climate changes, current accounts

only deduct the emissions sequestered in the ocean from the footprint. Although possibilities for carbon sequestration include the fertilization of oceans and the pumping of carbon emissions underground, the reversion to forests from human-altered landscapescropland, pastures, and settlementsis used to calculate the footprint because it best reects the biospheres sequestration potential without human management. Reforestation measures have been implemented on a small scale and actively debated as a legitimate source of carbon credits in international climate negotiations. However, this approach does not suggest that the problem of increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere can be solved through sequestration alone. Rather, it shows that the biosphere does not provide sufcient biological capacity for sequestration, and that it is highly unlikely that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere can be stabilized without reducing carbon emissions. According to this method, the ecological footprint of fossil fuels equals the area that would be needed to assimilate carbon emissions through reforestation. Although sequestration rates vary with the temporal and spatial scales involved, and global average rates cannot be determined with great precision, sequestration would decrease signicantly after 3050 years as replanted forests mature. Although some studies have found that mature forests have retained their sink capacity, others have found that they loose their capacity or even become net carbon sources. Using the waste assimilation approach, the ecological footprint of fossil fuels provides a conservative estimate of the bioproductive area needed to assimilate carbon emissions. Assuming a generous sequestration rate of 0.95 tons C/ha/year and deducting the oceanic sink, a reforested area of more than 6 billion gha would be needed to balance current emissions. The total bioproductive land mass amounts to only 9.1 billion ha, equivalent to 10.6 billion gha.

6.2 Renewable Substitution Method


This approach builds on the idea of maintaining the energy stock. This means that depleted fossil fuel would be compensated with equivalent amounts of energy stocks. The most common long-term energy stock the biosphere accumulates is in wood. Hence, this method for calculating the ecological footprint of fossil fuels, and nonrenewable fuels in general, estimates the area required to supply their energy equivalent in fuelwood.

Ecological Footprints and Energy

The ecological footprint of fossil fuels thus becomes the area needed to renew the energy equivalent of fossil fuel combustion. Unlike largescale hydropower or geothermal energy, the energy stored in fuelwood is available in unmanaged systems and has been the mainstay of most preindustrial societies (although many have managed fuelwood stocks). The ecological footprint expressed in fuelwood compares societies nonrenewable energy demands with the biospheres unmanaged renewable supply. On average, forests produce approximately 40 GJ of fuelwood/gha/year. Harvesting young, quickly growing trees may increase this capacity to 60 GJ/gha/year. Much of the energy captured by forests through net primary production is lost to decomposition and herbivory, and a portion of the remaining biomass energy, or net ecosystem productivity, is in foliage, roots, or other sources less suitable as fuel. Variations of this technique describe the area needed to derive the energy equivalent of fossil carriers not in fuelwood but in cultivated biomass such as switchgrass, ethanol, or methanol derived from agriculture or forestry. Converting biomass fuels into liquid and gaseous mediums for use in prevailing infrastructure would net less energy than the total captured in unconverted biomass. Andrew Ferguson of Optimum Population Trust promotes a slightly different approach by estimating an appropriate mix of renewable energy sources photovoltaic arrays, offshore and onshore wind turbines, biomass-based ethanol, etc. The composition of the mix reects the limitations of wind power due to its irregular availability and the cost barriers of photovoltaic arrays. He estimates that this mix could generate the current energy demand at approximately 95 GJ/ha/year. This would most likely occupy above-average-quality land, indicating an energy yield less than 95 GJ/gha/year.

TABLE II
Regeneration Rates of Fossil Energya Fossil energy carriers Coal Fuels Natural gas Yield (MJ/m2/year) 0.05 0.08 0.01

a Annual accumulation rates of fossil energy carriers based on estimated rates of carbon sedimentation. The data are presented in unweighted hectares. The ecological footprint typically weighs hectares by their productivity. From Stro glehner (2003).

area needed to continue fossil fuel consumption indenitely. With a global footprint of 100 gha/ capita50 times greater than global biocapacity and 100 times greater than the footprint from carbon sequestration and fuelwood substitutionit also demonstrates that the continued disparity between rates of fossil fuel consumption and creation will lead to the stocks depletion.

7. NUCLEAR ENERGY
As with fossil fuels, the area occupied through extraction, production, and waste disposal of nuclear energy is relatively minor, amounting to 0.4 ha/MW. The embodied energy of nuclear infrastructure is small relative to the energy output because of the high energy density of nuclear fuel. By itself, nuclear fuel makes relatively few demands on biological productivity when contained, but intentional and accidental releases of radioactive materials have compromised human and environmental health. Failures of nuclear power plants can appropriate large bioproductive areas by making them unsuitable for human use for extended periods of time. The meltdown of Chernobyl has completely removed a 170,000-ha zone of alienation from economic turnover and restricted activities on hundreds of thousands of additional hectares since the 1986 accident and possibly for thousands of years into the future. Fallout contaminated larger areas extending from nearby Ukraine, Belarus, and southwestern Russia to distant Poland, Norway, and Sweden. The actual biocapacity occupied by nuclear energy is uncertain and speculative. Some studies treat the nuclear footprint as negligible or subsume these demands within national built-up areas and fossil fuel expenditures. Most nuclear footprints use the footprint of the fossil fuel energy equivalent.

6.3 Fossil Carrier Regeneration


This method treats fossil fuels like a renewable resource. The waste assimilation and renewable substitution approaches give the areas needed to balance emissions and energy stocks, not the area required to renew fossil fuels per se. This approach considers fossil fuels as a very slowly renewable resource limited by sedimentation and accumulation rates, and it denes their use as sustainable only when the fossil fuel stocks in the lithosphere are neither diminished nor transferred to the atmosphere (Table II). This method provides an assessment of the

Ecological Footprints and Energy

8. RENEWABLE ENERGY
Some studies have examined the ecological footprint of renewable energy sources but more work is needed (Table III). This inattention is partly due to the fact that renewable sources provide an insignicant fraction of all commercial energy. Moreover, rapidly developing technologies make generalizations about conversion efciencies, embodied energies, and life spans difcult. Although the energy embodied within the fossil fuel infrastructure is miniscule when compared with the energy expended in the fuels extraction, transportation, and combustion, the energy embodied in most renewables infrastructure dominates an essentially free energy source.

8.1 Hydropower
Hydropower is the largest renewable source of commercial energy. In 1995, it provided 7% of all commercial energy and 20% of electricity globally. The ecological footprint of hydropower is based on the area inundated by the reservoir created by the

TABLE III
Energy Yield of Renewable Sourcesa Renewable sources Electricity, photovoltaic Electricity, wind Electricity, water power Solar heating Wood extensive Wood intensive Straw as by-product Miscanthus Rape oil Methyl ester of rapeseed Organic ethanol from sugarcane Organic ethanol from sugar beet Organic ethanol from wood Organic ethanol from wheat Organic ethanol from maize Organic methanol from wood Organic biogas, digestor gas, and landll gas Yield (MJ/m2/year) 450 900 100 1200 7 190 4 25 6 5 9 8 5 5 2 12 5

dam, the energy embodied in the dam, and the biological productivity lost because of the dam, primarily through depleted sh stocks. Sergio Pacca and Arpad Horvath assessed the carbon emissions released in the construction, maintenance, and operation of various electricity facilities. Basing the hydropower analysis on the Glen Canyon Dam, which generated 5.55 TWh of electricity in 1999, they determined these processes would release 25,000 tons of CO2 per year averaged over a 20year life cycle. The associated carbon footprint is 10.5 gha/MW. The ratio of energy output to inundated area and the productivity of inundated land are highly variable. Energy output uctuates with power demand and reservoir levels, although typical outputs for hydropower facilities in the United States are 40% of maximum capacity. A random survey of 24 hydropower dams in the Pacic Northwest of the United States found that the inundated areas produce an average of 3200 GJ/ha/year (10 ha/MW), varying widely between 15 GJ/ha/year (lower-course dams) and 11,000 GJ/ha/year (upper-course dams in mountain areas). A similar survey of 28 dams in 17 countries suggests an annual production of 900 GJ/ha/year (35 ha/MW), ranging from a minimum of 12 GJ/ha/year for Ghanas 833-MW Akosombo Dam to a maximum of 15,300 GJ/ha/year for Chiles 500-MW Pehuenche Dam. These values are highly variable and underestimate energy output per hectare by including the original river area as part of the inundated area. Hydroelectric plants located far from populated centers have long-distance transmission inefciencies that increase the footprint of useful electricity to reach homes and commercial facilities.

8.2 Wind Power


The most attractive sites for wind power are often offshore or in remote regions, potentially limiting demands for biocapacity. Moreover, the actual area occupied by turbines and other infrastructure is only 5% of the total area of wind farms, leaving the remainder available for pasture, sheries, or other dual uses. At an average output of 8200 GJ/ha/year, the built-up footprint of a wind power plant on average-quality pasture is 1.8 gha/MW. The energy embodied in the extensive infrastructure needed to capture a diffuse and intermittent energy source forms a large part of the footprint of wind power. Pacca and Horvath estimate that the CO2 embodied in the construction and materials of a wind farm capable of generating 5.55 TWh/year

a The data are presented in unadjusted hectares that do not reect differences in biological productivity. The ecological footprint weighs hectares by their productivity. These data may differ from other estimates depending on technology or other factors. For instance, sources indicate slightly higher ethanol yields in Brazil of 12 MJ/m2/year. From Sto glehner (2003).

Ecological Footprints and Energy

would total 800,000 tons over 20 yearsapproximately 10 times greater than the embodied emissions of a similarly sized coal-powered facility (excluding operational emissions). Assuming a 20-year life span, the carbon sequestration footprint is 16.9 gha/MW, one order of magnitude greater than the built-up area of the wind farm. If wind or another renewable carrier supplied the construction energy, the footprint of embodied energy would be greatly reduced.

8.3 Photovoltaic
Like other renewable energy technologies, photovoltaic (PV) arrays contend with low power densities. Nevertheless, annual energy output can be impressive. Assuming an annual power density of 15 W/m2 typical in commercial systems and allowing additional space for shading and access within largescale installations, PV systems occupy 10 ha/MW. One hectare of PV panels can deliver the thermal energy contained in 100 tons of oil annually. Without including the excess capacity required in a working infrastructure, PV arrays covering a square 160 km on each side could supply the electricity demand of the United States. With a population of 280 million people, this amounts to 0.01 ha/capita. The global area amounts to .002 ha/capita, covering a square 310 km on each side. The complete replacement of fossil fuels with a hydrogen fuel cell-based economy may require an additional area manyfold larger. PV installations atop buildings or in arid regions can mitigate competition for bioproductive areas, an advantage shared with wind power. Also, although potential PV sites may be more widespread than those for wind power, the embodied energy is also greater. Pacca and Horvath estimate the CO2 emissions embodied in a PV system producing 5.55 TWh/year to be 10 million tons over 20 years, or 211 gha/MW.

9. ENERGY FOOTPRINT OF PREINDUSTRIAL SOCIETY


Historically, renewable energy captured chemically through photosynthesis drove nearly every aspect of society. Renewable kinetic sourceswind and waterheld much less global prominence, although they expanded rapidly in the 18th and 19th centuries, when wind mills spurred the colonization of the American frontier and waterwheels became increasingly important in industrialization. In most

areas, however, fuelwood supplied the majority of heat energy for small-scale activities, such as domestic heating and cooking, and larger scale enterprises such as metal smelting. In many areas, fuelwood limitations were one factor restricting the size of preindustrial cities. According to Vaclav Smil, 12th-century Paris, then a large city of 100,000 people, may have required 1.5 tons of fuelwood per person annually, amounting to 3 PJ/year. Even if half of this demand was met through wood grown on cropland or other nonforest sources, as in some low-income countries today, the fuelwood footprint would have approached 0.4 gha/ capita. The forest area required for energy demands alone equaled 50200 times the urban area. Overland transport of fuelwood was prohibitively expensive at distances of more than 30 km, and cities with river access drew resources from great distances. Preindustrial Beijing, for example, imported huge rafts of wood from as far as Szechwan province more than 1000 km away. Fuelwood limits halted economic activities in less fortunate cities, where villages and industry competed for energy sources. According to one estimate, in 17th-century Europe fuelwood shortages halted production every other year in a typical ironworks furnace, which in 1 year of operation consumed 4000 ha of forest. Assuming a typical European growth rate of 5 tons/ha/year, this would equal a footprint of approximately 10,000 gha. Fuelwood demands increased severalfold during industrialization. By the mid-19th century, the United States fuelwood demand was 5 tons/capita, with a possible fuelwood footprint of 2.5 gha/ capitaa national total of 60 million gha. Crop residues and other cultivated biomass have played a signicant but limited role in providing heat since their value as food and fertilizer introduced competing demands. David Pimentel estimates that currently fuelwood supplies half of all the worlds biomass fuel by weight, whereas crop residues supply one-third. The higher energy density of fuelwood, however, means that the actual contribution of crop residues to biomass energy is smaller. More important, the chemical energy of cultivated biomass fed people and livestock, the predominant source of mechanical energy for transportation and labor. Powerful draft horses, for example, provided the labor of 10 men but could reach peak performance only when well nourished. Such an animal would eat the daily equivalent of 5 kg of oats, matching the food needs of 6 people. Nevertheless, the mechanical energy available in draft animals retained its advantage well into industrialization, and in the

Ecological Footprints and Energy

Number of earths

United States, the demand for horses reached its height in the second decade of the 20th century. At an average yield of just over 1100 kg of oats/ha/year, a working horse may have had a cropland footprint of 3.5 gha. Some estimates place horse feed as constituting 20% of cultivated cropland in the United States at that timeamounting to approximately 60 million gha or 0.55 gha/capita. The ecological footprint of energy obtained through fuelwood and agriculture faced local limits. Transgression of these constraints leads to an ecological decit, a state in which ecological demands exceed local capacity. An ecological decit signies either imports of ecological capacity from abroad or ecological overshoot of local resources. Although ecological imports may contribute to overshoot abroad, local overshoot has immediate domestic implications. In the case of renaissance England, an escalation in charcoal demands for metal smelting led to widespread deforestation. Abundant coal supplies yielded a ready charcoal replacement and weaned England from fuelwood by the late 17th century, ushering in an early industrialization and the dawn of the rst fossil fueldependent society.

TABLE IV
Global Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity, 1999 Footprint (gha/cap) 0.5 0.1 0.3 0.1 0.1 1.2 2.3 Biocapacity (gha/cap) 0.5 0.3 0.9 0.1 0.1 0.0 1.9

Area Cropland Pasture Forest Fisheries Built-up land Fossil fuels and nuclear energy Total

1.40 1.20 1.00 0.80 0.60 0.40 0.20 0.00 1961 CO2 portion of humanity's ecological footprint Earth's ecological capacity (one earth available) Number of earths used by humanity

10. ENERGY FOOTPRINT OF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY


Tapping fossil fuel reservoirs accumulated over hundreds of millions of years exceeds local rates of fossil fuel formation, leading to local overshoot. The widespread transition to fossil fuels, however, has resulted in global overshoot and a qualitative shift in humanitys relation to the biosphere (Table IV; Fig. 1). Despite radical local and regional ecological changes from preindustrial societies, the human economy only surpassed global limits when fossil fuel use exceeded ecologically sustainable rates and induced the expansion and intensication of extractive industries such as agriculture and forestry. Although local overshoot portends immediate domestic resource constraints, global overshoot from fossil fuels externalizes costs, diffusing the feedback needed to adjust behavior. Renewable energy sources bounded the growth of preindustrial economies, but the switch to fossil fuels curtails photosynthetic limitations. Energy production from biomass equaled that from coal and oil at the end of the 19th century. Fifty years later, however, biomass energy amounted to only onefourth of global energy production, and its contribu-

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FIGURE 1 Global ecological footprint versus biocapacity,


19611999. Human demand exceeded the biospheres supply during this time period, most clearly manifest in increasing CO2 concentrations and overexploited sheries.

tion to useful work was far smaller. Meanwhile, oil has increased in global prominence to become the largest primary energy source (Table V). The magnitude of this transformation has been immense. At more than 320 EJ/year, the global production of fossil fuels, for example, dwarfs the energy captured in food production by an order of magnitude. With the advent of industrial civilization, nonrenewable sources became the prime economic drivers, supplanting not only fuelwood for heat but also livestock for transportation and labor. Fertile areas freed by the shift from biomass energy to fossil energy, decreasing transportation costs, global markets, and the diffusion of burdens from fossil fuel combustion helped spark an enormous expansion,

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TABLE V

Ecological Footprints and Energy

Global Ecological Footprint of Energy, 1999 Energy source Oil Coal Natural gas Nuclear Fuelwood Hydro Total Data are rounded. Footprint (gha/cap) 0.5 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.05 0.002 1.2

beginning with the human population in the mid19th century and soon followed by the global economy. Today, the footprint of timber products in high-income countries is 0.7 gha/capita. Mechanized forestry boosted labor productivity with modern mills, harvesters, and chainsawsCanadian timber extraction, for example, was 3.1 gha per Canadian in 1999. In contrast, the biocapacity of global forests approaches 0.9 gha/capita, of which only 0.4 gha/capita is exploitable. The fossil fuel transition also enables industrial shing eets to harvest previously inaccessible stocks, raising the footprint of the global marine catch to its estimated biocapacity of 0.1 gha/capita. The footprint of marine sh consumption averages at least triple this rate in high-income countries. The mechanization of agriculture relieved the 20% of cropland used to feed work horses in the early 20th-century United States. The freed area became a source of meat and milk production, and in 1999 meat- and milk-producing livestock consumed 60% of U.S. maize. At the same time, the intensication of agriculture, along with new breeding techniques, initiated dramatic increases in crop yields and the human population. A substantial portion of the food energy consumed by people relies on fertilizers and agricultural chemicals synthesized through fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have created a transitory carrying capacity of signicant proportions. The ecological footprint accounts make this phantom planet visible. As the coiner of this term, William Catton, points out, this extra capacity gives humanity the illusion of living on a larger planet and encourages human expansion beyond the regenerative capacity of the biosphere. Consider the following comparison: 0.7 TW of human food produced today occupies more

than 40% of the biospheres regenerative capacity; in comparison, fossil fuel consumption exceeds 10 TW. From this perspective, the fossil fuel provides humanity with a temporary income that corresponds to the capacity of more than ve biospheres (0.4% biospheres 10 TW/0.7 TW 5.7 biospheres). Therefore, some biologists liken humanitys aggregate behavior to that of species who come in contact with a large but nite food stock. Examples are deer introduced to an island or yeast cells placed in a cup full of sugar. Such an abundance of food typically leads to population growth beyond the habitats carrying capacity, resulting in a population crash. So far, the growth curves of the fossil fuel economy have resembled the yeast cells in a nite cup of sugar. The difference is that people have choice. Like nancial budgeting, ecological footprint accounts help society choose the most desirable allocation of the limited budget nature provides. The alternative is to continue liquidating natural capital.

SEE ALSO THE FOLLOWING ARTICLES


Aquaculture and Energy Use  Complex Systems and Energy  Earths Energy Balance  Easter Island: Resource Depletion and Collapse  Ecological Risk Assessment Applied to Energy Development  Ecosystem Health: Energy Indicators  Ecosystems and Energy: History and Overview  Modeling Energy Supply and Demand: A Comparison of Approaches  Sustainable Development: Basic Concepts and Application to Energy

Further Reading
Costanza, R. (2000). The dynamics of the ecological footprint concept. Ecol. Econ. 32(3), 341346. Ferguson, A. (1999). The logical foundations of ecological footprints. Environ. Resource Econ. 1, 149156. Ferguson, A. (2002). The assumptions underlying eco-footprinting. Population Environ. 23, 303313. Hoffert, M., Caldeira, K., Benford, G., Criswell, D., Green, C., Herzog, H., Jain, A., Kheshgi, H., Lackner, K., Lewis, J., Lightfoot, H., Manheimer, W., Mankins, J., Mauel, M., Perkins, L., Schlesinger, M., Volk, T., and Wigley, T. (2002). Advanced technology paths to global climate stability: Energy for a greenhouse planet. Science 298, 981987. Loh, J. (ed.) (2002). Living Planet Report 2002. Worldwide Fund for Nature. Gland, Switzerland. Moffatt, I. (2000). Ecological footprints and sustainable development. Ecol. Econ. 32(3), 359362. Pacca, S., and Horvath, A. (2002). Greenhouse gas emissions from building and operating electric power plants in the

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Upper Colorado River Basin. Environ. Sci. Technol. 36, 3194 3200. Rees, W. (2000). Eco-footprint analysis: Merits and brickbats. Ecol. Econ. 32, 371374. Simmons, C., Lewis, K., and Moore, J. (2000). Two feettwo approaches: A component-based model of ecological footprinting. Ecol. Econ. 32(3), 375380. Sto glehner, G. (2003). Ecological footprintA tool for assessing sustainable energy supplies. J. Cleaner Production 11, 267277.

Wackernagel, M., Monfreda, C., and Deumling, D. (2002a). The ecological footprints of nations: How much nature do they use? How much nature do they have, Sustainability Issue Brief. Redening Progress, Oakland, CA. Wackernagel, M., Schulz, N., Deumling, D., Callejas Linares, A., Jenkins, M., Kapos, V., Monfreda, C., Loh, J., Myers, N., Norgaard, R., and Randers, J. (2002b). Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 99(14), 92669271.

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