Fig 1.
Land use intensity of electricity (LUIE: ha/TWh/y), shown on log scale.
Boxes represent the inter-quartile range with the median as the middle bar. Whiskers extend to the highest or lowest data point that is within 1.5 times the inter-quartile range; points outside this range represent outliers. Electricity sources: nuclear energy (Nuclear), geothermal energy (Geo), wind energy with footprint only, (Wind-), natural gas footprint only (NG-) and including spacing (NG+), hydroelectric power for single purpose dams (Hydro), coal (Coal), concentrating solar power (CSP), ground-mounted photovoltaic solar energy (PV), wind energy with footprint (Wind-) and spacing (Wind+), and residual biomass (BioRes) and dedicated biomass (BioDed).
Table 1.
Land use intensity of electricity (LUIE) showing total direct and indirect land use (ha/TWh/y).
We show median, mean, and interquartile range (IQR) for the LUIE, along with the number (n) of observations for each power source. We performed an ANOVA analysis with Tukey’s pairwise comparisons on the log10 of LUIE for different sources, which is represented by different letters. Sources that share a letter have mean LUIE that are not statistically different. Hydroelectric was excluded from the ANOVA analysis because its variance was too large.
Fig 2.
Relationship between the land use intensity of electricity (ha/TWh/y) and lifecycle GHG emissions (metric tons CO2-eq/TWh) on a log scale.
Error bars represent interquartile range. GHG emissions source data: IPCC Fifth Assessment, Working Group III [60].
Fig 3.
Land area (Mha) for future electricity generation scenarios, broken down by source of land use: Hydroelectric, fossil fuels, non-hydro renewables, and spacing from wind and natural gas.
Land use for biomass electricity is included in non-hydro renewables, but we assume all biomass comes from residue or waste for these calculations, thus representing a lower bound. JD1 refers to the Jacobson & Delucchi scenario assuming all wind is onshore, and JD2 assumes 50% of wind is onshore and 50% is offshore. Total land required to generate electricity in each future decarbonization scenario is shown with standard errors. GEA_Sup, GEA_Eff, and GEA_Mix are the GEA Supply, Efficiency, and Mixed scenarios respectively. Electricity generation data for the current mix (2017) comes from the BP Statistical Review.
Fig 4.
Amount of electricity sourced from biomass in each of the scenarios we evaluated.
Most scenarios do not specify whether the biomass will be sourced from dedicated crops or managed forests, or sourced from waste and residue. However, several scenarios include more biomass combustion than could be reasonably sourced from waste and residues, assuming all waste and residue produced globally could be economically collected. *Global technical potential for biomass production comes from Searchinger and Heimlich (2015).