Shedding light on land use change for solar farms

Abstract To address the climate and ecological crises, land-based mitigation efforts are required, with the deployment of renewable energy infrastructure playing a significant role. Land use change for solar farms has been rapidly accelerating worldwide and this is projected to continue. Quantifying historic land use change for solar farms is essential to provide a robust evidence base given growing concerns around land use competition and to reliably estimate the land required for projected solar photovoltaic (PV) energy developments. Using the UK as a study nation, we quantify land take for solar farms over time and space, grounded in spatial solar farm, land cover and agricultural land classification datasets. Specifically, we resolve uncertainties around how much land has been converted to solar farms across the UK, estimate land use change for solar farms on high grade agricultural land and project further land take for a range of solar PV deployment targets. We show that solar farms occupy around 0.06%–0.07% of the total UK land area and most land for solar farms was previously agricultural land, with around 65% arable and 30% improved grassland. To meet the most ambitious solar PV targets, up to 0.72% of the UK land area may need to host solar farms by 2050. Future land pressures could be eased through multiple land use options, such as combining agriculture and solar farm deployment or embedding biodiversity conservation within solar farms, but this will rely on the development of appropriate policies and industry motivation.