Facility-specific environmental footprints of wind and solar power at a global scale

Wind and solar power are vital for climate change mitigation, producing electricity at much lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than conventional fossil-based technologies. Here, we obtain facility-specific environmental footprints of utility-scale wind and solar power across the globe. We investigate how the GHG footprint of wind and solar power varies across space and across technological characteristics. We will furthermore investigate other environmental footprints such as mineral resource scarcity to assess whether there is a trade-off between low GHG footprints and possibly higher other footprints.

We use facility-specific technological characteristics of ~30,000 wind parks and ~10,000 photovoltaic solar parks across the globe, such as capacity, hub height, rotor diameter or type of panel, to determine the life-cycle environmental impacts per wind or solar park. The produced power per facility over its lifetime is computed based on technological characteristics as well as location-specific hourly climate input from the ERA5 reanalysis dataset. The environmental footprint is then defined as impact divided by power produced, e.g. g CO₂-eq/kWh, to allow for comparison between facilities and across energy sources.

The facility-specific footprints will be shown on maps to indicate spatial variability and range of footprints of both wind and solar power. We will furthermore investigate the variability in footprints using analysis of variance, in order to indicate whether climate (i.e. location-specific wind or radiation) or technological characteristics (i.e. hub height, rotor diameter or type of panel) is the main cause of variability in footprints.