Can forest land be used to generate solar power

Should solar farms be placed over forests or through deforestation?

Placing solar farms over forests or through deforestation should be discouraged. Forests and solar energy are both critical to achieving the climate goals proposed by the Paris Agreement. However, large-scale deployment of solar farms requires vast land areas, potentially posing conflicts with other land uses.

Are solar farms a viable alternative to forests?

Forests and solar energy are both critical to achieving the climate goals proposed by the Paris Agreement. However, large-scale deployment of solar farms requires vast land areas, potentially posing conflicts with other land uses. For example, solar farms have been built in forested regions or with a direct cost to forests (through deforestation).

Does land use for solar energy compete with other land uses?

Based on the spatially defined LUE of solar energy, as well as the identified potential for solar energy in urban areas, deserts and dry scrublands, land use for solar energy competes with other land uses through the inherent relative profitability of each land use.

Can solar farms be built over forests?

Land-use conflicts between solar farms and forests have occurred partly because of weak institutions (Kim et al., 2021; Moreira-Dantas and Söder, 2022) and have been further strengthened by the assumption that building solar farms over forests is feasible and highly energy-efficient. However, this assumption has not been well evaluated.

Is solar energy a good option for land use?

However, recent studies based on satellite views of utility-scale solar energy (USSE) under operation, either in the form of photovoltaics (PV) or concentrated solar power (CSP), show that their land use efficiency (LUE) is up to six times lower than initial estimates 17, 18, 19.

Do solar farms and forests have land-use conflicts?

Overall, our results suggest that the extent of land-use conflicts between solar farms and forests is small but widespread across the world. These results represent show how realization of climate mitigation targets through renewable energy may come at the cost of forests.