Land use for United States power generation: A critical review of existing metrics with suggestions for going forward

Elizabeth Wachs and Bernard Engel

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2021, vol. 143, issue C

Abstract: Renewable-based energy systems have the potential to vastly increase the use of land devoted to energy, thus drastically changing landscapes and habitats, since conventional, fossil-based energy systems use a very small proportion of earth's land surface. Land use affects ecosystems, biodiversity, and geochemical cycles. It also affects people's well-being due to effects on views, noise, recreation, and quality of life. This means strong and transparent metrics to assess land use for energy systems are needed. This review considers some of the most influential papers and metrics in this category, namely ecological footprint, land use intensity and power density, attempting to make them transparent in terms of data used and calculations performed. The literature frequently relies heavily on assessments that are decades old, many dating from the 1980's. The lack of transparency in the methods and even confusion in the units has led to the published metrics being applied incorrectly. Even within the same paper, the calculation is often performed several different ways, leading to errors and confusion on several orders of magnitude. An assessment of land use by major electricity production technologies and fuels as well as an explanation and guide to commonly used metrics is provided.

Keywords: Energy; Electricity; Land use; Power density; Ecological footprint (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032121002045
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:143:y:2021:i:c:s1364032121002045

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2021.110911

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().