Allotment of Waste and Degraded Land Parcels for PV Based Solar Parks in India: Effects on Power Generation Cost and Influence on Investment Decision-Making

Sanju John Thomas, Sheffy Thomas, Sudhansu S. Sahoo, Ravindran Gobinath and Mohamed M. Awad
Additional contact information
Sanju John Thomas: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), Cochin 682022, India
Sheffy Thomas: Federal Institute of Science and Technology, Angamaly 683572, India
Sudhansu S. Sahoo: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Odisha University of Technology and Research (OUTR), Bhubaneswar 751003, India
Ravindran Gobinath: Department of Civil Engineering, S R Engineering College, Warangal 506371, India
Mohamed M. Awad: Mechanical Power Engineering Department, Mansoura University, Mansoura 35516, Egypt

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: Solar parks are well-defined areas developed in the high solar potential area, with the required infrastructure to minimize the potential threat for the developers. Land occupancy is a major concern for the solar park. The government policy mostly emphasizes the use of waste-degraded land for solar parks. In a competitive energy market, any attempt to use waste-degraded land parcels, without policy regulatory support, can bring large-scale disruptions in the quality and cost of power. The present study investigates the potential of using waste degraded land, with a focus on the impact on the cost of generation and decision making. The study investigates the possibility of including the cost of the externalities in the overall cost economics, through policy and regulatory interventions. Data related to India has been considered in the present analysis. Results show that there are less socio-economic and ecological impacts in using wastelands, compared to land, in urban-semi urban areas with an opportunity cost. Thus, the policy and regulatory interventions could promote wasteland utilization and lure favorable decision-making on investments.

Keywords: solar park; land utilization; land transformation; waste-degraded land; cost of the externalities; socio-economic and ecological impacts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1786/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1786/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1786-:d:742193

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().