In a thought-provoking report from the McKinsey consultancy* that just arrived at AutoInformed the amount of land required to meet the wind generation and solar photovoltaic capacity in Europe to arrive at the legally required climate neutrality by 2050 is substantial. In France, Germany, and Italy, where ~50% of the EU renewable-energy sources (RES) installations are expected, meeting 2040 RES capacity objectives would require an additional 23,000 to 35,000 square kilometers of land that is an area equal to the size of Belgium, according to McKinsey.
To say that this has political implications is, perhaps, an understatement. AutoInformed has observed for decades that abstract policy discussions and agreements can become quite contentious when they move toward implementation in one’s backyard – onshore or off the shoreline.
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“Although specific requirements vary by country, a rapid acceleration in the annual installation rate of new wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) assets is required,” said McKinsey. The so-called “REPowerEU sets a target of 1236 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity by 2030, requiring more than 700 GW of additional RES capacity to be added from 2023 to 2030, a threefold increase in annual installations compared with the RES capacity added from 2014 to 2022 (~230 GW). With REPowerEU targets of 600 GW of installed solar PV capacity and 500 GW of wind capacity by 2030, more than 90% of the targeted additional capacity will need to be supplied by wind and solar,” said McKinsey Executive summary: these require large pieces of habitable land.
Moreover, “beyond the technical suitability of the land, which is a hard limiting factor, a significant amount of land in Europe is unavailable for development because of strict regulations. And the land that remains available is often well suited for – and therefore must compete with – other societal or environmental objectives, such as agriculture and biodiversity conservation,” said McKinsey.
Technical limits include existing RES installations and areas with limited natural wind or sun concentration McKinsey notes that regulatory and environmental limitations, which acknowledge local communities’ concerns about land use, can reduce the land available for RES development.
“These limitations are valid and should be addressed when assessing trade-offs and obstacles as they relate to land availability. With these points in mind, our estimates show that about 9 percent of available land in Germany is suitable for wind and less than 1 percent of land in Italy is suitable without limitations for solar PV,” said McKinsey.
* McKinsey’s Electric Power & Natural Gas Practice. Stathia Bampinioti, Nadia Christakou, Bastian Paulitz, Lukas Pöhler, Antoine Stevens, Raffael Winter, and Ekaterina Zatsepina worked on the study.
McKinsey – EU Decarbonization Targets Require Lots of Land
In a thought-provoking report from the McKinsey consultancy* that just arrived at AutoInformed the amount of land required to meet the wind generation and solar photovoltaic capacity in Europe to arrive at the legally required climate neutrality by 2050 is substantial. In France, Germany, and Italy, where ~50% of the EU renewable-energy sources (RES) installations are expected, meeting 2040 RES capacity objectives would require an additional 23,000 to 35,000 square kilometers of land that is an area equal to the size of Belgium, according to McKinsey.
To say that this has political implications is, perhaps, an understatement. AutoInformed has observed for decades that abstract policy discussions and agreements can become quite contentious when they move toward implementation in one’s backyard – onshore or off the shoreline.
Click to enlarge.
“Although specific requirements vary by country, a rapid acceleration in the annual installation rate of new wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) assets is required,” said McKinsey. The so-called “REPowerEU sets a target of 1236 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity by 2030, requiring more than 700 GW of additional RES capacity to be added from 2023 to 2030, a threefold increase in annual installations compared with the RES capacity added from 2014 to 2022 (~230 GW). With REPowerEU targets of 600 GW of installed solar PV capacity and 500 GW of wind capacity by 2030, more than 90% of the targeted additional capacity will need to be supplied by wind and solar,” said McKinsey Executive summary: these require large pieces of habitable land.
Moreover, “beyond the technical suitability of the land, which is a hard limiting factor, a significant amount of land in Europe is unavailable for development because of strict regulations. And the land that remains available is often well suited for – and therefore must compete with – other societal or environmental objectives, such as agriculture and biodiversity conservation,” said McKinsey.
Technical limits include existing RES installations and areas with limited natural wind or sun concentration McKinsey notes that regulatory and environmental limitations, which acknowledge local communities’ concerns about land use, can reduce the land available for RES development.
“These limitations are valid and should be addressed when assessing trade-offs and obstacles as they relate to land availability. With these points in mind, our estimates show that about 9 percent of available land in Germany is suitable for wind and less than 1 percent of land in Italy is suitable without limitations for solar PV,” said McKinsey.
* McKinsey’s Electric Power & Natural Gas Practice. Stathia Bampinioti, Nadia Christakou, Bastian Paulitz, Lukas Pöhler, Antoine Stevens, Raffael Winter, and Ekaterina Zatsepina worked on the study.