Supply-side options to reduce land requirements of fully renewable electricity in Europe

Abstract

Renewable electricity can fully decarbonise the European electricity supply, but large land requirements may cause land-use conflicts. Using a dynamic model that captures renewable fluctuations, I explore the relationship between land requirements and total system cost of different supply-side options in the future. Cost-minimal fully renewable electricity requires some 97,000 km 2 (2% of total) land for solar and wind power installations, roughly the size of Portugal, and includes large shares of onshore wind. Replacing onshore wind with offshore wind, utility-scale PV, or rooftop PV reduces land requirements drastically with only small cost penalties. Moving wind power offshore is most cost-effective and reduces land requirements by 50% for a cost penalty of only 5%. Wind power can alternatively be replaced by photovoltaics, leading to a cost penalty of 10% for the same effect. My research shows that fully renewable electricity supply can be designed with very different physical appearances and impacts on landscapes and the population, but at similar cost.

Visions for our future regional electricity system: Citizen preferences in four EU countries

“…There are many ways to design an electricity system based on different technologies, with transmission as the main or a minor means of flexibility provision, by producing most electricity near home or importing everything, with strongly different impacts on land use and costs. 47 , 48 , 49 To identify citizen preferences for different types of renewable power futures, we designed a conjoint experiment along six system attributes known to affect project and policy acceptance, including technology choice and household prices ( Table 1 ). Although we acknowledge that not all attribute combinations may provide systems that are technically feasible or efficient, we emphasize that our focus is on people’s preferences.…”

Spatial Trade-Offs in National Land-Based Wind Power Production in Times of Biodiversity and Climate Crises

“…As the whole energy system will undergo a transition, it will also be important to consider the environmental impacts of other renewable energy sources, for example, offshore wind power and solar power, which are both scheduled for major expansions in Norway during the next decades. Replacing onshore with offshore wind power, for example, will reduce land requirements (Tröndle 2020). Finally, while we have investigated how to factor in both local and wider environmental impacts and derive more optimal spatial configurations of wind power production, it will be important to work towards regulatory instruments to internalise environmental impact in developer and regulator decisions.…”

How much land does bioenergy require? An assessment for land‐scarce Switzerland

“…Switzerland imports at the moment 85% of the overall energy needed for its gross energy consumption (BFE, 2019a) and a complete provision of renewable electricity at the country level is unlikely (Tröndle et al, 2019). Moreover, a fully renewable electricity supply could present very different physical appearances and have different impacts on landscapes and the population (Tröndle, 2020). The need to import energy can, however, lead to an energy sprawl in other countries, particularly those producing energy for export, leading to land occupation changes (Fthenakis & Kim, 2009) and even favour the ongoing global land grabbing, whereby investors buy or lease farmland to produce agricultural commodities for the global market and in detriment of the local population (Scheidel & Sorman, 2012).…”