Land-use in the Electric Colombian System: Hidden Impacts and Risks of Large-scale Renewable Projects

Abstract

In the sustainable development era, massive land-use for electricity production represents a crucial challenge for environmental and social systems. Available information about the use of land in this sector is limited, for that reason in this paper we include the power density methodology to evaluate land-use in Colombia to produce electricity. The power density metric depicts the relation between energy produced and area used in this process, considering extraction-conversion-storage. The analysis between power electricity generation and land-use is made for the Colombian electric system, finding that there is no direct relationship between the area occupied by a generation plant and the electricity produced, since the evidence does not show that at larger areas greater power is obtained. Hydropower plants have large spectrum values of power densities, depending on the dam construction purpose (river-flow control). Fossil-fired power plants require less land for its production even including the fuel extraction area. Photovoltaic and wind-power plants in this comparison have the lowest power density values, accordingly, they require far larger areas and represent a risk for sustainability in this perspective.

Land-Use Requirements of Solar and Wind Power

“…In contrast to the aforementioned regions, South America, Australia & Oceania, and Africa are significantly less represented. LURs for South America were found in ten publications 12,14,31,39,[93][94][95][96][97][98] , eight of them provided data for solar PV LURs covering three countries with data on Brazil prevailing 12,14,[93][94][95][96][97][98] . Wind power LURs were provided in four publications for four countries 12,39,97,98 .…”

“…LURs for South America were found in ten publications 12,14,31,39,[93][94][95][96][97][98] , eight of them provided data for solar PV LURs covering three countries with data on Brazil prevailing 12,14,[93][94][95][96][97][98] . Wind power LURs were provided in four publications for four countries 12,39,97,98 . LURs for the CSP technology are only available for Chile 31 .…”

“…In the following discussion, we will explore key terms based on our systematic literature review and discuss crucial parameters that must be understood to interpret the associated LUR estimates correctly. We encountered 22 different terms for LURs across 55 publications 11,12,16,23,25,26,[28][29][30][32][33][34][35][36][38][39][40][41][41][42][43][44]46,49,50,[59][60][61][63][64][65][65][66][67][68]71,72,74,79,82,84,85,89,91,92,[96][97][98][102][103]…”

“…Such variety cannot be explained solely by actual differences between the definitions of LURs, i.e., different terms clearly point to the same LUR definition. As shown in figure 3a), the most frequently used terms are power density 18,[34][35][36]38,44,46,64,65,65,109,110 , capacity density 16,18,26,34,35,42,60,61,67,97,105 , and area requirements 40,71,79,84,102,106,107 . In the category others, we compiled terms reported only once -this was the case for 18% of publications.…”

Evolution, Challenges, and Perspective in the Implementation of Projects with Renewable Energy Sources: Colombia Case

“…These are approximately 1400 localities, characterized by low payment capacity, low average consumption and high costs of providing electricity service, among other factors . Likewise, the communities living in these areas have important properties of ethnic minorities (indigenous, Afro-Colombian and native islanders), so a social and economic characterization is required prior to the implementation of any project (Ramírez-Tovar et al, 2022). In recent years different energy projects have been developed in the rural sector and non-interconnected areas in Colombia, the objective of these projects is to provide clean technologies to people in remote areas to increase their productive capacities and improve their quality of life (Gielen et al, 2019).…”