Abstract
Meeting climate mitigation and sustainable development goals requires rapid increases in both renewable energy development and carbon storage in ecosystems. If sited with the sole goal of maximizing production, renewable energy may negatively impact biodiversity and carbon storage. Here, we evaluated the potential unintended environmental consequences of this type of business-as-usual development scenario. We spatially allocated land-based, utility-scaled wind and solar energy needed to achieve emission reduction goals from nationally determined contributions under the Paris Climate Agreement. Siting was conducted at 1-km resolution and followed a scenario where on-shore wind, concentrated solar power, and photovoltaic solar renewable energy developments were located where wind and solar resources were highest. Once sited, we evaluated the potential losses of natural lands, Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), threatened and endangered species, and carbon emissions. Over 11 million ha of natural lands can be lost (>1/4 in KBAs), releasing almost 415 million tons of carbon storage, which equals 8.6% of overall Paris Agreement emission reduction goals. Globally we found that the ranges of 1,574 threatened and endanger species could be impacted, with the highest numbers in the tropical countries of Indonesia (282), Malaysia (273) and Thailand (253). Avoiding land-based emissions through improved renewable energy siting can reduce these losses, potentially saving $47.5-$155.9 billion USD based on social carbon costs. Consideration of these impacts will help reduce investor risk to facilitate a timely transition to a low-carbon economy.
Highlights
Humanity is facing two major existential challenges (Ripple et al, 2017): increasing demand for natural resources for a human population that may exceed 9 billion by 2050 (Crist et al, 2017), and global warming that increases the frequency of environmental disasters and causes economic damages (Burke et al, 2018)
We used technical potential maps estimates derived by BaruchMordo et al (2019), where for TWh needed to offset electricity and heat generation from fossil fuel into renewable energy in order to meet the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions established by the Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs)
Our results suggest that development that is sited based solely on maximizing renewable energy production has the potential to convert >11 million ha of natural lands, with over 73% of that loss occurring in the top 10 GHG emitting countries (Table 1, Figure 1)
Summary
Humanity is facing two major existential challenges (Ripple et al, 2017): increasing demand for natural resources for a human population that may exceed 9 billion by 2050 (Crist et al, 2017), and global warming that increases the frequency of environmental disasters and causes economic damages (Burke et al, 2018). No global assessments have evaluated how the projected increase in renewable energy under PCA goals will affect both biodiversity and terrestrial carbon storage, or grounded such analyses in country level policy commitments. To address this gap, we present a spatially explicit forecast of wind and solar energy expansion under the PCA, and explore the biodiversity and carbon storage consequences of maximizing exploitation of solar and wind energy resources to meet PCA goals. We calculated the area needed to meet NDC energy targets within each country and estimated the natural land that would be cleared if development focuses solely on maximizing resource potential. Because emissions from land clearing can create a carbon deficit in meeting PCA goals, and because it is essential to meet peak carbon emissions in the 2–3 years (Figueres et al, 2017), we calculated the number of years required to repay such losses if renewables are sited without considering land-based carbon values
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