Assessing vulnerabilities and limits in the transition to renewable energies: Land requirements under 100% solar energy scenarios

Abstract

The transition to renewable energies will intensify the global competition for land. Nevertheless, most analysesto date have concluded that land will not pose significant constraints on this transition. Here, we estimate theland-use requirements to supply all currently consumed electricity andfinal energy with domestic solar energyfor 40 countries considering two key issues that are usually not taken into account: (1) the need to cope with thevariability of the solar resource, and (2) the real land occupation of solar technologies. We focus on solar since ithas the highest power density and biophysical potential among renewables. The exercise performed shows thatfor many advanced capitalist economies the land requirements to cover their current electricity consumptionwould be substantial, the situation being especially challenging for those located in northern latitudes with highpopulation densities and high electricity consumption per capita. Assessing the implications in terms of landavailability (i.e., land not already used for human activities), the list of vulnerable countries enlargessubstantially (the EU-27 requiring around 50% of its available land), few advanced capitalist economiesrequiring low shares of the estimated available land. Replication of the exercise to explore the land-userequirements associated with a transition to a 100% solar powered economy indicates this transition may bephysically unfeasible for countries such as Japan and most of the EU-27 member states. Their vulnerability isaggravated when accounting for the electricity andfinal energy footprint, i.e., the net embodied energy ininternational trade. If current dynamics continue, emerging countries such as India might reach a similarsituation in the future. Overall, our results indicate that the transition to renewable energies maintaining thecurrent levels of energy consumption has the potential to create new vulnerabilities and/or reinforce existingones in terms of energy and food security and biodiversity conservation.