The Financial and Environmental Consequences of Renewable Energy Exclusion Zones

Abstract

As countries decarbonise, the competition for land between energy generation, nature conservation and food production will likely increase. To counter this, modelling, and sometimes energy policies, use exclusion zones to restrict energy deployment from land deemed as important to society. This paper applies the spatially-explicit ADVENT-NEV model to Great Britain to determine the cost imposed on the energy system when either environmental or food production exclusion zones are applied. Results show that exclusion zones impose a cost of up to £0.63 billion (B), £19.17 B and £1.33 B for the solar, wind, and bioenergy pathways. These costs give an indication of the value being placed on protecting these areas of land. When multiple exclusions are imposed on bioenergy, the high pathway is infeasible indicating a more flexible approach may be needed to meet net zero ambitions. The model also shows how the value of ecosystem services changes when exclusion zones are applied, highlighting how some exclusions increase non-market costs whereas others decrease them. In several cases exclusion zones are shown to increase social costs, the opposite of their intended use. For these exclusions to be justifiable, the unobserved values missing from the model must be as large as these increases.

The Opportunity Costs of Environmental Exclusion Zones for Renewable Energy Deployment

“…The moderate effects we find for exclusion zones are again in line with previous analyses of setback distances in Germany (Ruhnau et al, 2023;Salomon et al, 2020;Stede et al, 2021). Analyzing different types of exclusion zones in the United Kingdom, Delafield et al (2023) also find only minor effects in terms of generation costs. In contrast, Reutter et al (2023) find more substantial generation cost effects of setback distances.…”

“…Consequently, the overall effect of overlapping exclusion zones on their opportunity costs can be ambiguous and depend a lot on the spatial context. Looking at various environmental exclusion zones in the United Kingdom, Delafield et al (2023) find that overlapping them does in fact increase the social costs of deploying wind power, solar photovoltaics and bioenergy.…”

“…Thus, they cannot provide insights on the performance of environmental exclusion zones in a real-world policy scenario where RES deployment is promoted through tenders. Delafield et al (2023) analyse the impacts of implementing exclusion zones for nature protection and food security in Great Britain. They show that environmental exclusion zones may sometimes also increase the non-market costs of RES deployment -contrary to what is intended by their implementation.…”

Upscaling miscanthus production in the United Kingdom: The benefits, challenges, and trade‐offs

“…(ALC 4-5) may actually prove either infeasible to meet supply targets or result in worse outcomes in terms of GHG reduction and ecosystem services, a shift toward smaller areas of more productive land might provide a greater number of benefits (Albanito et al, 2019;Delafield et al, 2023;Milner et al, 2016). Clifton-Brown et al (2023) make the comparison that under the EU Common Agricultural Policy in 1990s, 10% of agricultural land, irrespective of land grade, was required to be "set-aside" as fallow to avoid overproduction.…”

Natural capital approaches for the optimal design of policies for nature recovery

“…Through valuing the ecosystem service flows delivered by different habitat-creation projects, natural capital approaches might allow a decision-maker to answer the important question of which habitats to establish in which locations to deliver the most benefits to society. Indeed, the natural capital approach has been used extensively to answer questions of this ilk; for example, in identifying optimal locations for conservation areas [ 23 , 24 ], agri-environment interventions [ 25 ], greening of urban environments [ 26 ], afforestation [ 27 ], renewable energy infrastructure [ 28 ], freshwater allocation [ 29 ] and flood risk interventions [ 30 ]. Of course, in the real world where land is owned by private agents, policy-makers are rarely in a position to dictate exactly how land is used.…”