Does solar/wind siting pose a threat of agricultural production?
I’ve seen this argument come up a lot, including in my own community, so, relatively naive to the topic, I did a little more research on this. Here are a few highlights from what I found:
The land footprint of solar in the US is very small relative to cultivated land. A study by the Great Plains Institute in 2021 found that even with planned projects, solar development only takes up 0.23% of average county land, compared to 8-15% on average for cultivated land.
Community concerns can be valid, but often the problem is a lack of context and education about the impact of renewable energy sources on the land.
A more recent study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that it would take less than 1% of land in the lower 48 states to decarbonize the US power sector with wind and solar. This amount of land use is similar to land occupied by railroads today and less than half of the are of active oil and gas leases.
Accounting for responsible siting practices, such as avoiding protected land, urban areas, difficult terrain, conflicts with existing infrastructure, and avoiding prime crop and farmland, in the lower 48 states 29% of land is suitable for Wind and 39% is suitable for solar. This is much more than we actually need to decarbonize energy production in the US.
Overall, utility scale wind and solar projects are much less destructive to the land and are in most cases reversible, as they don’t typically degrade the land for future agricultural uses.
Responsible siting is critical, but now more than ever we need solutions to rapidly scale renewable energy production and infrastructure.
What would you add?
#climate #renewableenergy #wind #solar
Problem Solver | Vehicle System Engineer | Systems Architect | Mentor
3moDo you see on farm electric storage in this equation for backup power and consistent power delivery in the future?