Knowledge Tree
solar energy development
Also known as: solar energy infrastructure development, solar development, sustainable solar energy development
Facts (21)
Sources
Practitioners' perceived risks to biodiversity from renewable energy ... nature.com Feb 27, 2025 15 facts
claimState environmental agency practitioners perceived greater impacts on plants and future ecosystems from solar energy (0.17 and 0.60, respectively), reflecting their view of solar energy development as a substitute for fossil fuel extraction.
claimSolar energy development can fragment corridors essential to animal and plant dispersal or modify large swathes of habitat.
claimPractitioners across all regions except the Southeast and Midwest perceive solar energy development as having a negative impact on both native plants and animals.
measurementPractitioners from the Southwest and Northeast regions perceive equal or greater impacts from solar energy development compared to industrial timber operations, with scores ranging from -0.33 to 1.
claimPractitioners in the Pacific Coast, Southwest, and Mountain regions expect solar energy development to impact desert, shrubland, and grassland ecosystems in 2023 and 2050.
measurementPractitioners from the Northeast and Mountain regions perceive less impact from solar energy development, with a rescaled Likert score of -1.
measurementPractitioners from the Pacific Coast perceive the impact of solar energy development as equal to that of industrial fossil fuel extraction, with a rescaled Likert score range of -0.2 to 0.
claimPractitioners in the Southeast and Midwest regions perceive the impacts of solar energy development on native plants and animals as neutral.
claimIndustrial logging and solar development are documented threats to forest ecosystems in the Northeastern United States.
claimPractitioners generally expect future solar development to have fewer biodiversity impacts than other Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) drivers.
referenceKarban et al. (2024) developed models to predict the effects of solar energy development on plants and wildlife in the Desert Southwest region of the United States.
claimManaging the land-use conflict between industrial logging and solar development is a core question for regional land planning and conservation groups in the Northeastern United States.
measurementPractitioners perceive that solar energy development negatively impacts grassland (-7%), forest (-7%), wetland (-6%), rocky (-6%), and savanna (-5%) ecosystems.
measurementPractitioners from NGOs perceived the least negative impacts from solar energy development (range -0.52 to -0.93), while practitioners from state environmental agencies perceived the greatest impacts (range -0.86 to 0.60).
referenceGrodsky, Moore-O’Leary, and Hernandez (2017) argue that multi-dimensional species-species and species-process interactions should be used to inform sustainable solar energy development in desert ecosystems.
Renewable Energy's Land Use Reckoning kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu Jun 3, 2025 5 facts
perspectiveSolar energy development in Massachusetts has divided the environmental community between groups primarily interested in land conservation and groups primarily interested in mitigating climate change.
claimMassachusetts has a legislatively mandated goal to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, which has driven a significant increase in solar energy infrastructure development.
measurementEnvironmental screening reduced the technically feasible land for solar development in the study area from 1.2 million acres to 100,000 acres.
perspectiveJonathan Thompson asserts that Massachusetts has sufficient land capacity to sustain solar energy development to meet demand without sacrificing natural and working lands.
referenceA report by Harvard Forest and Massachusetts Audubon modeled three different pathways for solar energy development in Massachusetts, ranging from a status quo siting scenario to more protective scenarios.
The potential land requirements and related land use change ... nature.com Feb 3, 2021 1 fact
referenceHernandez et al. (2016) examined the impacts of solar energy development on land cover change and protected areas.