How Big a Problem Is Siting for U.S. Renewable Energy?

To eliminate fossil fuels, the U.S. will need to build a lot of wind and solar farms, and these are going to cover a lot of real estate. For example, here’s a map of the 100% renewable scenario from the Net-Zero America study (click to enlarge):

And here's a great visualization from Bloomberg, showing how much land those wind and solar farms would cover if you put them all next to each other:

That dark blue region in the middle of Kansas shows the total footprint of the wind turbines themselves. But in this scenario new wind farms (which can be shared with other agriculture) would cover an area equal to all of Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Illinois, and Kentucky, plus part of Indiana and 15 million acres offshore. Compare that to the area of all existing (as of early 2021) wind farms, indicated by the similarly colored segment of Iowa. Meanwhile, new solar farms would cover an area equal to most of Indiana, with only minor opportunities for shared use of that land.

As another comparison, that big green area that covers all of Missouri and a slice of Iowa represents all the land we’re already using for production of ethanol and other biofuels. (This scenario assumes that the amount of land used for bio-energy production would remain the same, but that the biomass would be used more efficiently to produce hydrogen while sequestering carbon.)

The Net-Zero America study includes other zero-carbon scenarios for 2050 that make somewhat smaller demands on land use, through heavy reliance on nuclear energy and/or fossil fuels with carbon capture and sequestration. On the other hand, demand for wind and solar power could continue to grow beyond the year 2050 due to growth in the U.S. population or in our per-capita energy demand. I find it hard to imagine a future in which U.S. wind and solar farms end up expanding by less than a factor of 10.

Which brings us to the big question:

• Can we actually find sites for that many wind and solar farms?

Physically, the answer is an unambiguous yes. Expanding solar farms by a factor of 10 or even 20 wouldn’t eat up any more land than we’re already using for inefficient biofuel production. Expanding wind farms by a similar factor would essentially mean a lot more shared use of agricultural lands.

But there are going to be issues. In fact, there already are issues.

Everyone agrees that industrial-scale wind and solar farms aren’t appropriate in every physically feasible location. Cities and national parks come to mind, for example. So there needs to be a process for deciding whether any particular location is appropriate. In a democracy, everyone gets a chance to participate in that process. By the same token, not everyone will be happy with every outcome.

Indeed, it’s easy to find stories about local opposition (pejoratively, “NIMBYs”) putting the brakes on solar and wind projects. Local opponents killed the Cape Wind offshore farm in Massachusetts and the Battle Born solar farm in Nevada. They’ve delayed the Icebreaker pilot attempt to put wind turbines on Lake Erie. They’ve enacted sweeping bans on utility-scale renewables in Madison County, Iowa, and San Bernardino County, California.

What’s less clear is whether these local efforts to block wind and solar development have made much of a dent in total U.S. renewable energy deployment. There are now more than 5000 utility-scale wind and solar farms operating in the U.S.:

If the number that have been blocked or significantly delayed by local opposition were more than a few percent of 5000, I should think we would have heard more about it. Here’s a study that lists 23 wind projects and 23 solar projects that have run into major local conflicts (though the study doesn’t claim that the list is comprehensive). Here’s a report on local zoning restrictions on renewable energy that gives about a dozen examples (again not claiming to be comprehensive). Until I see evidence to the contrary, my working assumption is that the number of examples of these sorts is still in the dozens, not the hundreds.

Of course, there must also be plenty of potential wind and solar projects that were scrapped on account of anticipated local opposition, before being publicly proposed. Apparently wind developers have given up on the whole state of Vermont, and I’m getting the sense that an awful lot of the desert Southwest, especially in California, is effectively off limits. Local opposition to renewable energy projects has become a very big deal in a few particular regions, but doesn’t yet seem to be a huge obstacle nationally.

So what’s the prospect for the next few decades, as we scale-up wind and solar generation by an order of magnitude? On one hand, siting should get more difficult as the best sites (both physically and in terms of local support) get developed. On the other hand, developers may be learning how to better navigate local siting conflicts, while renewable-friendly officials at the state and federal levels may enact policies that take some legal tactics away from the NIMBYs.

One example of such a policy could be the federal “permitting reform” that Congress has promised to take up in the coming weeks. I don’t doubt that there’s room to improve federal permitting procedures, though I’m not going to endorse a bill I haven’t seen. Whatever ends up in the bill, I’m skeptical that such a move will make as big a difference as its proponents are suggesting, given that most of the legal obstacles to renewable energy projects are being erected at the local—not federal—level.

Naturally I hope that enough reasonably uncontroversial sites can be found for the big buildup of wind and solar that’s in our country’s near future. I’m sure it won’t be easy, yet I remain very unsure of just how difficult it will be. My sense is that the siting of renewable energy projects is a ripe subject for more investigation and reporting, both by academic researchers and by journalists who specialize in energy and climate.

I look forward to reading and learning more.