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The potential land requirements and related land use change emissions of solar energy.

ABSTRACT: Although the transition to renewable energies will intensify the global competition for land, the potential impacts driven by solar energy remain unexplored. In this work, the potential solar land requirements and related land use change emissions are computed for the EU, India, Japan and South Korea. A novel method is developed within an integrated assessment model which links socioeconomic, energy, land and climate systems. At 25-80% penetration in the electricity mix of those regions by 2050, we find that solar energy may occupy 0.5-5% of total land. The resulting land cover changes, including indirect effects, will likely cause a net release of carbon ranging from 0 to 50 gCO₂/kWh, depending on the region, scale of expansion, solar technology efficiency and land management practices in solar parks. Hence, a coordinated planning and regulation of new solar energy infrastructures should be enforced to avoid a significant increase in their life cycle emissions through terrestrial carbon losses.

SUBMITTER: van de Ven DJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7859221 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The potential land requirements and related land use change emissions of solar energy.

van de Ven Dirk-Jan DJ Capellan-Peréz Iñigo I Arto Iñaki I Cazcarro Ignacio I de Castro Carlos C Patel Pralit P Gonzalez-Eguino Mikel M

Scientific reports 20210203 1

Although the transition to renewable energies will intensify the global competition for land, the potential impacts driven by solar energy remain unexplored. In this work, the potential solar land requirements and related land use change emissions are computed for the EU, India, Japan and South Korea. A novel method is developed within an integrated assessment model which links socioeconomic, energy, land and climate systems. At 25-80% penetration in the electricity mix of those regions by 2050, ...[more]

PMID: 33536519

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Project description:Land-use and climate change are significantly affecting stream ecosystems, yet understanding of their long-term impacts is hindered by the few studies that have simultaneously investigated their interaction and high variability among future projections. We modeled possible effects of a suite of 2030, 2060, and 2090 land-use and climate scenarios on the condition of 70,772 small streams in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, United States. The Chesapeake Basin-wide Index of Biotic Integrity, a benthic macroinvertebrate multimetric index, was used to represent stream condition. Land-use scenarios included four Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (A1B, A2, B1, and B2) representing a range of potential landscape futures. Future climate scenarios included quartiles of future climate changes from downscaled Coupled Model Intercomparison Project - Phase 5 (CMIP5) and a watershed-wide uniform scenario (Lynch2016). We employed random forests analysis to model individual and combined effects of land-use and climate change on stream conditions. Individual scenarios suggest that by 2090, watershed-wide conditions may exhibit anywhere from large degradations (e.g., scenarios A1B, A2, and the CMIP5 25th percentile) to small degradations (e.g., scenarios B1, B2, and Lynch2016). Combined land-use and climate change scenarios highlighted their interaction and predicted, by 2090, watershed-wide degradation in 16.2% (A2 CMIP5 25th percentile) to 1.0% (B2 Lynch2016) of stream kilometers. A goal for the Chesapeake Bay watershed is to restore 10% of stream kilometers over a 2008 baseline; our results suggest meeting and sustaining this goal until 2090 may require improvement in 11.0%-26.2% of stream kilometers, dependent on land-use and climate scenario. These results highlight inherent variability among scenarios and the resultant uncertainty of predicted conditions, which reinforces the need to incorporate multiple scenarios of both land-use (e.g., development, agriculture, etc.) and climate change in future studies to encapsulate the range of potential future conditions.

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The potential land requirements and related land use change emissions of solar energy.

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The potential land requirements and related land use change emissions of solar energy.

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