Got Land? The Energy Transition’s Major Issue

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Forget lithium, cobalt, and nickel—the most crucial resource for the acceleration of solar and wind power generation capacity is the availability of land for renewables development and the associated permitting and biodiversity regulations.

As important as critical minerals are to the energy transition, if countries don’t have enough large tracts of land to deploy the renewables technologies produced from these critical materials, they will be falling short of their own goals of a fast rollout of renewable energy sources.

Permitting, regulations on biodiversity and protecting the environment, and NIMBYism are constraining the land resource for renewables in Europe and threaten to derail the EU’s targets to significantly increase the share of green energy in its energy consumption.

Earlier this year, the European Union member states and the European Parliament reached a political agreement to raise the targeted share of renewable energy in the EU’s energy consumption to 42.5% by 2030, up from a current target of 32%. The 42.5% target will be binding – once it becomes law after endorsements by both the EU Council and the European Parliament – while a 45% share of renewable energy in the bloc’s energy consumption by 2030 is an indicative aspirational target under the agreement.

The provisional agreement also includes accelerated permitting procedures for renewable energy projects, with the goal to fast-track the deployment of renewable energies and allow the EU to become independent from Russian energy sources as soon as possible.

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It takes up to nine years in some countries to hand out a permit for a single project, which is incompatible with the EU’s ambitions – last year the EU only installed 16 GW of new wind when it actually needs 31 GW every year on average to 2030 to meet its targets, WindEurope noted.

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Even if permitting in the EU becomes smoother, securing so much available land for hundreds of gigawatts of additional solar and wind power capacity could be a big challenge for Europe, McKinsey & Company said in a recent report.

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“Beyond the technical suitability of the land, which is a hard limiting factor, a significant amount of land in Europe is unavailable for development because of strict regulations,” McKinsey’s analysts wrote.

“And the land that remains available is often well suited for—and therefore must compete with—other societal or environmental objectives, such as agriculture and biodiversity conservation.”

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Regulations and constraints on land use across Europe limit the availability of land for renewables development, McKinsey says, so “it is important for local communities, businesses, and regulators across Europe to act hand in hand and quickly to ensure that land for renewable-energy development does not become a bottleneck.”

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