Delineating solar energy and land use interactions: An exigency for standardized metrics

Globally, demand for renewable energy continues to increase in response to climate change, leading to the current rapid shift away from greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels. Solar energy production, especially production, especially photovoltaics (PV), is expected to triple globally by the year 2050. As land scarcity intensifies, competition increases for land to produce energy, food, and conservation. It is pressingly important to quantify and disseminate land-use patterns associated with solar energy development. Currently, there are no standardized metrics or reporting systems for universally communicating land-solar interactions. For example, a variety of terms and units are used to describe solar energy land use, leading to unnecessary heterogeneity in information available to stakeholders and decision makers. This lack of standardization can hinder dissemination of interdisciplinary scientific findings to accurately inform policy. As solar energy requires relatively high amounts of land compared to conventional generation technologies, it is critical to properly report land-use values to compare both across solar energy developments and other forms of energy generation technologies. We conducted a systematic literature review that utilized search terms identifying both solar energy developments (e.g solar PV, photovoltaics, and solar energy) and associated land-use related terms (e.g land use intensity, land use, and land use efficiency). Results of our review reinforce the need for standardization within the context of land-solar interactions, including capacity-based land use, generation-based land use, and population-based land use metrics. Here, we propose a standardized system of reporting metrics for each category of aforementioned land-solar interactions and develop a novel solar energy-land use metric relating population density, energy demand, and land availability. This novel standardized system of solar energy-land use reporting will help researchers more accurately describe various spatial relationships of industrial-scale solar energy development and potentially lead to more informed solar siting and development decisions through clearer, standardized language.