Energy-Water-Land Nexus Under Low-Carbon Globalization

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Water, Energy, Land and Food (WELF) Nexus".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (17 March 2025) | Viewed by 484

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Interests: economic geography; environmental economics; sustainable development; political ecology; global supply chain; food security
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Renewable energy capacities such as wind and solar power have grown rapidly over the past decade, with deployments in almost every country and region of the world. Large-scale renewable energy projects play a pivotal role in decarbonizing the grid to produce an economy with net-zero emissions and mitigate global climate change. 

However, increasing environmental, social, and ecological pressures arising from the continued growth of renewable installed capacities have demonstrated that much of this technically feasible land is unlikely to be available for deployment. The transition to renewable energy thus needs to take land use security into consideration, especially focusing on the competition of energy-related land use occupation, the optimal siting of renewable energy facilities, and the potential impacts driven by large-scale renewable energy siting.

The transition to renewable energy will require the use of large swathes of land for utility-scale renewable energy project sites. The impacts of this large-scale facility deployment on local communities raise questions about issues that remain to be explored, including, but not limited to, social awareness, energy justice, the optimal land for use, and ecological impacts.

This Special Issue covers, but is not limited to, the following topics:

  • Techno-economic and demographic factors that influence renewable energy siting
  • Planning, siting, and permitting processes for large-scale renewable energy facilities.
  • Modelling and mapping potential land suitability for large-scale renewable energy
  • Land use implications of renewable energy transition pathways towards carbon neutrality.
  • Land footprint and land use changes due to renewable energy expansion.
  • Energy infrastructure siting and the related economic, social, and ecological impacts.

Dr. Mengyao Han
Guest Editor

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • renewable energy siting
  • social–ecological impacts
  • photovoltaic panels
  • land occupation

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

20 pages, 4679 KiB  
Article
Exploring the Balance Between Ecosystem Services and Economic Benefits via Multi-Objective Land Use Optimization
by Xiaoyun Li and Zhaonian Lu
Land 2025, 14(5), 920; https://doi.org/10.3390/land14050920 - 23 Apr 2025
Viewed by 161
Abstract
Excessive human activities associated with rapid industrialization and urbanization have exerted tremendous pressure on limited land resources. Scientific land use planning is essential for attaining sustainable development. This study focuses on multi-objective land use optimization in Xinjiang, China’s largest arid region, targeting the [...] Read more.
Excessive human activities associated with rapid industrialization and urbanization have exerted tremendous pressure on limited land resources. Scientific land use planning is essential for attaining sustainable development. This study focuses on multi-objective land use optimization in Xinjiang, China’s largest arid region, targeting the dual goals of maximizing ecosystem services and economic benefits. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) and the future land simulation (FLUS) model are integrated innovatively to explore optimal land use in terms of both quantity and spatial distribution. Four distinct development scenarios are predefined and compared: natural development, ecological preservation, economic development, and sustainable development. The main results are as follows: (1) The fragile ecosystem of Xinjiang has been under tremendous pressure during the past 40 years. The predominant pattern in land use transition was the increase in construction land (+115.66%) and cultivated land (+47.18%) at the expense of grassland (−5.48%) and forest land (−4.15%), both of which hold substantial ecological significance. (2) Among these predefined scenarios, the sustainable development scenario is considered more favorable in the future due to its ability to balance ecological preservation and economic development. All the ecologically valuable lands will have certain degrees of growth, whereas the expansion scale of construction land will be effectively controlled. (3) The lack of high-quality land and the unpredictability of water resources will be the two major obstacles to implementing this sustainable development scenario. To overcome them, the government should provide policy and financial support for restricting construction land expansion, exploiting unused land, and strengthening water conservation. This study contributes to formulating more effective land use strategies under multiple conflicting goals and ultimately achieving sustainable development of the economy and ecology in Xinjiang as well as other similar regions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Water-Land Nexus Under Low-Carbon Globalization)
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