Use Of Satellite Data and Spatially Differentiated Characterization Factors for Biodiversity Impact of Land Use due to Wind Turbines

The impact of wind energy deployment on biodiversity mostly originates from habitat loss and disturbance. The assessment of the impact of land use (LU) on biodiversity necessitates spatial differentiation. To be able to assess the LU impact of wind turbines (WT), detection of LU change thanks to satellite data is necessary. However, there is a mismatch between the LU types in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and satellite data. In order to assess the European WT fleet, a model taking into account spatial explicit characterization factors (CF), satellite data and WT parameters is needed. Corinne Land Cover 2018 100mx100m dataset is consulted to evaluate pre-installation LU type. For each ecoregion of Europe, land use type from Corinne dataset and land use type and intensity data from life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method are compared to obtain co-occurrence matrices. The area of surface of change of European WT fleet is identified thanks to the analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite images from 2015 to 2023. The change due to road construction is based on legal minimal distance to road for construction of new WT in European countries. For occupation, the lifetime of the WT is used. The new model will be open-source and also integrated in an online interactive map that optimizes the position and characteristics of WT and shows the diverse impacts of WT, including an LCA model as well as impacts on noise, landscape, among others. The surface area change was analyzed for more than 78,000 WT in Europe. Depending on the distance buffers, concave hulls and convex hulls assessed around the WT, between 22m²/WT and 152m²/WT are changed after WT construction. This model will be used to evaluate for the first time the European WT fleet impact on biodiversity in terms of potential disappeared fraction (PDF) of species per WT.