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Observation-based estimates of land availability for wind power: a case study for Czechia

BACKGROUND: The availability of land for the installation of wind power turbines is restricted by numerous factors. Besides climatic conditions, the deployment of wind energy is limited by technical, social, economic, and environmental factors. Typically, assessments of land availability for wind po...

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Autores principales: Nitsch, Felix, Turkovska, Olga, Schmidt, Johannes
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6919640/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31894197
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13705-019-0234-z
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author Nitsch, Felix
Turkovska, Olga
Schmidt, Johannes
author_facet Nitsch, Felix
Turkovska, Olga
Schmidt, Johannes
author_sort Nitsch, Felix
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The availability of land for the installation of wind power turbines is restricted by numerous factors. Besides climatic conditions, the deployment of wind energy is limited by technical, social, economic, and environmental factors. Typically, assessments of land availability for wind power use legal and technical criteria to estimate the potential for wind power expansion. In contrast, we use observed characteristics of wind power generation sites existing in Austria and Denmark to estimate its potential expansion in Czechia. We combined data on wind turbine locations with data on land use, wind speeds, human impact on land, and nature conservation areas. RESULTS: Our analysis shows that the density of wind power in Austria is variable, but higher on average (4.79 MW km(−2)) than in Denmark (1.76 MW km(−2)). Austrian wind turbines have been installed in areas where the human impact on land is mostly higher than the Austrian average, while in Denmark, no difference is observed. Regarding the land use composite, the share of agricultural land on sites with wind turbines is on average much higher (86%), while the share of forest is much lower (7%) in both countries. We identified a maximum potential area in Czechia of 543 km(2) with Austrian and 421 km(2) with Danish characteristics. When conservatively assuming observed historical power densities, this area translates to 2295 MW and 741 MW of installed wind power capacity, respectively. These results are a magnitude of order lower than the potentials found in existing studies. In a sensitivity analysis, we have examined that the availability of potential sites depends mainly on the population density, the human impact on land, prevailing wind speeds, and the height above sea level. CONCLUSIONS: We estimated available land area for potential wind turbine installations in Czechia using our newly developed methodology based on observed site characteristics of today’s wind power infrastructure in Austria and Denmark. Available land area indicated possible overestimation of wind power capacities proposed in the recent studies on the renewable energy transition. Hence, more rigorous consideration of land availability is required for assessments of potential wind power expansion.
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spelling pubmed-69196402019-12-30 Observation-based estimates of land availability for wind power: a case study for Czechia Nitsch, Felix Turkovska, Olga Schmidt, Johannes Energy Sustain Soc Original Article BACKGROUND: The availability of land for the installation of wind power turbines is restricted by numerous factors. Besides climatic conditions, the deployment of wind energy is limited by technical, social, economic, and environmental factors. Typically, assessments of land availability for wind power use legal and technical criteria to estimate the potential for wind power expansion. In contrast, we use observed characteristics of wind power generation sites existing in Austria and Denmark to estimate its potential expansion in Czechia. We combined data on wind turbine locations with data on land use, wind speeds, human impact on land, and nature conservation areas. RESULTS: Our analysis shows that the density of wind power in Austria is variable, but higher on average (4.79 MW km(−2)) than in Denmark (1.76 MW km(−2)). Austrian wind turbines have been installed in areas where the human impact on land is mostly higher than the Austrian average, while in Denmark, no difference is observed. Regarding the land use composite, the share of agricultural land on sites with wind turbines is on average much higher (86%), while the share of forest is much lower (7%) in both countries. We identified a maximum potential area in Czechia of 543 km(2) with Austrian and 421 km(2) with Danish characteristics. When conservatively assuming observed historical power densities, this area translates to 2295 MW and 741 MW of installed wind power capacity, respectively. These results are a magnitude of order lower than the potentials found in existing studies. In a sensitivity analysis, we have examined that the availability of potential sites depends mainly on the population density, the human impact on land, prevailing wind speeds, and the height above sea level. CONCLUSIONS: We estimated available land area for potential wind turbine installations in Czechia using our newly developed methodology based on observed site characteristics of today’s wind power infrastructure in Austria and Denmark. Available land area indicated possible overestimation of wind power capacities proposed in the recent studies on the renewable energy transition. Hence, more rigorous consideration of land availability is required for assessments of potential wind power expansion. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2019-12-17 2019 /pmc/articles/PMC6919640/ /pubmed/31894197 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13705-019-0234-z Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Original Article
Nitsch, Felix
Turkovska, Olga
Schmidt, Johannes
Observation-based estimates of land availability for wind power: a case study for Czechia
title Observation-based estimates of land availability for wind power: a case study for Czechia
title_full Observation-based estimates of land availability for wind power: a case study for Czechia
title_fullStr Observation-based estimates of land availability for wind power: a case study for Czechia
title_full_unstemmed Observation-based estimates of land availability for wind power: a case study for Czechia
title_short Observation-based estimates of land availability for wind power: a case study for Czechia
title_sort observation-based estimates of land availability for wind power: a case study for czechia
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6919640/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31894197
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13705-019-0234-z
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