Exclusion zones for renewable energy deployment: One man’s blessing, another man’s curse

Paul Lehmann and Philip Tafarte

Resource and Energy Economics, 2024, vol. 76, issue C

Abstract: Exclusion zones, like protected areas or setback distances, are the most common policy instrument to mitigate environmental impacts of human land-use, including the deployment of renewable energy sources (RES). However, exclusion zones may also increase generation and environmental costs of RES deployment. This paper aims to understand and quantify these trade-offs. Using a simple analytical model, we propose that cost effects of exclusion zones can be decomposed into a substitution effect (because RES generation is shifted to sites with higher or lower marginal costs) and an output effect (because more sites may be needed to attain a given RES generation target). We provide a numerical illustration for two examples of exclusion zones – setback distances to settlements and forest bans – which are implemented for wind power deployment in Germany. We find that moderate setback distances reduce disamenity costs but also lead to increases in generation and other environmental costs. This trade-off is primarily due to the output effect. Importantly, the output effect also implies that very restrictive setback distances may fail to reduce, and even increase, aggregate disamenity costs of wind power deployment. For forest bans, our analysis reveals substantial increases in disamenity costs. This trade-off mainly results from the substitution effect. Our analytical insights can be transferred to other fields of environmental policy, for example, exclusion zones regulating agricultural land-use or urban development.

Keywords: Forest; Germany; Land use; Land-use restriction; Setback distances; Spatial modelling; Wind power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q23 Q24 Q28 Q42 R14 R32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092876552300074X
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:resene:v:76:y:2024:i:c:s092876552300074x

DOI: 10.1016/j.reseneeco.2023.101419

Access Statistics for this article

Resource and Energy Economics is currently edited by J. F. Shogren and S. Smulders

More articles in Resource and Energy Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().