Evaluating Land Eligibility Constraints of Renewable Energy Sources in Europe

David Severin Ryberg, Martin Robinius and Detlef Stolten
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David Severin Ryberg: Institute for Electrochemical Process Engineering (IEK-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Wilhelm-Johnen-Str., D-52428 Jülich, Germany
Martin Robinius: Institute for Electrochemical Process Engineering (IEK-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Wilhelm-Johnen-Str., D-52428 Jülich, Germany
Detlef Stolten: Institute for Electrochemical Process Engineering (IEK-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Wilhelm-Johnen-Str., D-52428 Jülich, Germany

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-19

Abstract: The amount and distribution of land which is eligible for renewable energy sources (RES) is fundamental to the role these technologies will play in future energy systems. Unfortunately, land eligibility (LE) investigations in the literature are plagued by many inconsistencies between studies, impeding the work of researchers and policy makers interested in energy system development planning. As one factor contributing to this, the criteria used to construct land exclusion constraints have not been the focus of scientific investigation on a large scale, and as such their interactions are not well known.Therefore, an open source LE framework was used to perform evaluations in the European context of 36 commonly used constraints. After direct visualization, three measures by which these constraints are valuable to an LE analysis were computed: independence, exclusivity, and overlap. Results show extensive spatial sensitivity to constrain influence. Furthermore, some constraints, such as proximity to agriculture and woodland areas, rank high in all three measures; others, such as distance from airports and camping sites, consistently rank low; and still others, such as elevation, score highly in one measure but not the others. With these results, LE researchers can better understand the contributions of the constraints used in their analyses.

Keywords: renewable energy systems; land eligibility; land availability; social constraints; political constraints; conservation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

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