ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Predicted wind and solar energy expansion has minimal overlap with multiple conservation priorities across global regions.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Identifying the exposure of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity of steppe birds to renewable energy development.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- Photovoltaic arrays reshape multitrophic biodiversity through spatial heterogeneity in Qinghai Tibet Plateau alpine meadows.iScience · 2026Article
- Practitioner perceptions of biodiversity criteria for solar suitability analyses in the United States.npj biodiversity · 2026Article
- Balancing land use for conservation, agriculture, and renewable energy.Nature communications · 2026Article
- A high spatial resolution suitability layers to support feasible power plant site selection in China.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Photovoltaic Power Station Impacts on the Benthic Ecosystem and Sediment Carbon Storage in Tidal Flats in China.Environmental science & technology · 2024Article
- Climate-Smart Siting for renewable energy expansion.iScience · 2024Review
- Direct solar energy conversion on zinc-air battery.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Review
- Global land and water limits to electrolytic hydrogen production using wind and solar resources.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Solar Energy-driven Land-cover Change Could Alter Landscapes Critical to Animal Movement in the Continental United States.Environmental science & technology · 2023Article
- Renewable energy infrastructure impacts biodiversity beyond the area it occupies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Reply to Niebuhr et al.: Infrastructure impacts must always be assessed locally.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Reply to Pérez-García et al.: Perfect is the enemy of good.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Priority areas for conservation alone are not a good proxy for predicting the impact of renewable energy expansion.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Protected areas and renewable energy generation are critical tools to combat biodiversity loss and climate change, respectively. Over the coming decades, expansion of the protected area network to meet conservation objectives will be occurring alongside rapid deployment of renewable energy infrastructure to meet climate targets, driving potential conflict for a finite land resource. Renewable energy infrastructure can have negative effects on wildlife, and co-occurrence may mean emissions targets are met at the expense of conservation objectives. Here, we assess current and projected overlaps of wind and solar photovoltaic installations and important conservation areas across nine global regions using spatially explicit wind and solar data and methods for predicting future renewable expansion. We show similar levels of co-occurrence as previous studies but demonstrate that once area is accounted for, previous concerns about overlaps in the Northern Hemisphere may be largely unfounded, although they are high in some biodiverse countries (e.g., Brazil). Future projections of overlap between the two land uses presented here are generally dependent on priority threshold and region and suggest the risk of future conflict can be low. We use the best available data on protected area degradation to corroborate this level of risk. Together, our findings indicate that while conflicts between renewables and protected areas inevitably do occur, renewables represent an important option for decarbonization of the energy sector that would not significantly affect area-based conservation targets if deployed with appropriate policy and regulatory controls.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.