Environmental impacts from the installation and operation of large-scale solar power plants

Damon Turney and Vasilis Fthenakis

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2011, vol. 15, issue 6, 3261-3270

Abstract: Large-scale solar power plants are being developed at a rapid rate, and are setting up to use thousands or millions of acres of land globally. The environmental issues related to the installation and operation phases of such facilities have not, so far, been addressed comprehensively in the literature. Here we identify and appraise 32 impacts from these phases, under the themes of land use intensity, human health and well-being, plant and animal life, geohydrological resources, and climate change. Our appraisals assume that electricity generated by new solar power facilities will displace electricity from traditional U.S. generation technologies. Altogether we find 22 of the considered 32 impacts to be beneficial. Of the remaining 10 impacts, 4 are neutral, and 6 require further research before they can be appraised. None of the impacts are negative relative to traditional power generation. We rank the impacts in terms of priority, and find all the high-priority impacts to be beneficial. In quantitative terms, large-scale solar power plants occupy the same or less land per kWÂ h than coal power plant life cycles. Removal of forests to make space for solar power causes CO2 emissions as high as 36Â g CO2 kWÂ h-1, which is a significant contribution to the life cycle CO2 emissions of solar power, but is still low compared to CO2 emissions from coal-based electricity that are about 1100Â g CO2 kWÂ h-1.

Keywords: Solar; Environmental; Ecological; Impact; Land; use; Greenhouse; gases (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (76)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032111001675
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:15:y:2011:i:6:p:3261-3270

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

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 ().