Renewable Energy Siting under Low-Carbon Globalization

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Land Environmental and Policy Impact Assessment".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 17 March 2025 | Viewed by 5

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Interests: economic geography; environmental economics; sustainable development; political ecology; global supply chain; food security
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Renewable energy capacities such as wind and solar power have grown rapidly over the past decade, with deployments in almost every country and region of the world. Large-scale renewable energy projects play a pivotal role in decarbonizing the grid to produce an economy with net-zero emissions and mitigate global climate change. 

However, increasing environmental, social, and ecological pressures arising from the continued growth of renewable installed capacities have demonstrated that much of this technically feasible land is unlikely to be available for deployment. The transition to renewable energy thus needs to take land use security into consideration, especially focusing on the competition of energy-related land use occupation, the optimal siting of renewable energy facilities, and the potential impacts driven by large-scale renewable energy siting.

The transition to renewable energy will require the use of large swathes of land for utility-scale renewable energy project sites. The impacts of this large-scale facility deployment on local communities raise questions about issues that remain to be explored, including, but not limited to, social awareness, energy justice, the optimal land for use, and ecological impacts.

This Special Issue covers, but is not limited to, the following topics:

  • Techno-economic and demographic factors that influence renewable energy siting
  • Planning, siting, and permitting processes for large-scale renewable energy facilities.
  • Modelling and mapping potential land suitability for large-scale renewable energy
  • Land use implications of renewable energy transition pathways towards carbon neutrality.
  • Land footprint and land use changes due to renewable energy expansion.
  • Energy infrastructure siting and the related economic, social, and ecological impacts.

Dr. Mengyao Han
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • renewable energy siting
  • social–ecological impacts
  • photovoltaic panels
  • land occupation

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