Renewable Energy and Land Use in India: A Vision to Facilitate Sustainable Development

• Main Authors: Joseph Kiesecker, Sharon Baruch-Mordo, Mike Heiner, Dhaval Negandhi, James Oakleaf, Christina Kennedy, Pareexit Chauhan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-12-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: renewable energy; paris climate agreement; nationally determined contributions; energy development impacts; sustainable development; energy sprawl; wind energy; solar energy
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/1/281

India has committed to reduce emissions with a goal to increase renewable energy production to 175 gigawatts (GW) by 2022. Achieving this objective will involve rapidly increasing the deployment of solar and wind energy, while at the same time addressing the related challenges of the financing requirements, environment impacts, and power grid integration. Developing energy on lands degraded by human activities rather than placing new infrastructure within natural habitats or areas of high production agriculture would reduce cumulative impacts and minimize land use conflicts. We estimated that converted lands have the potential capacity of 1789 GW across India, which is >10 times the 2022 goals. At the same time, the total land footprint needed to meet India’s 2022 renewable energy target is large, ranging from ~55,000 to 125,000 km², which is roughly the size of Himachal Pradesh or Chhattisgarh, respectively. If renewable energy is advanced with the singular aim of maximizing resource potential, approximately 6700−11,900 km² of forest land and 24,100−55,700 km² of agricultural land could be impacted. Subsidies and incentive programs aimed at promoting low-impact renewable energy deployment and establishing mitigation obligations that raise costs for projects that create land-impacts could improve the public support for renewable energy.