PNNL

Abstract

Meeting global electrification goals while simultaneously addressing climate mitigation will require transformative changes to the energy sector, primarily large-scale renewable energy deployment. However, renewable energy infrastructure expansion requires significant land-assets and could come at high costs to ecosystem integrity, creating potential mismatches in global climate and biodiversity conservation priorities. Here, we explore the potential land requirements and biodiversity implications of alternative future global electrification pathways as depicted under the Shared Socioeconomic Scenarios (SSPs). High-resolution estimates of global energy densities for ten renewable and conventional technologies were overlain with global richness data to estimate biodiversity footprints (species per GWh) for each technology. Regionally explicit electricity generation scenarios (2020 to 2100) were downscaled to 50-km depictions of future technology deployment and were additionally constrained by scenarios of protected land exclusion and variant local energy development policies. Biodiversity footprints were used to explore land and biodiversity impacts through a heuristic cumulative biodiversity impact (CBI) score. CBI variation among SSPs was not a clear tradeoff in global climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation, but an outcome of total electricity demand, energy efficiency, and the total magnitude of renewable energy development and storage technologies. Despite comprising