Land use nature of energy storage power station planning

Last and most importantly, to the best of our knowledge, there is no publicly available suitability dataset for power plant site selection with high spatial resolutions (in 1 km × 1 km), which is crucial for direct energy infrastructure deployment studies.

While some pioneering studies employ a resolution of approximately 15–30 km 25, 26, this is still inadequate for the detailed plant-by-plant decision-making required for power plant siting, given that the average land -footprint of a utility-scale power plant is 1 km 2.

Then, they evidence that through a concerted, joint approach to energy and land use planning, large amounts of new energy infrastructure can be deployed while preserving as much of Australia's natural capital as possible, namely its precious biodiversity, agricultural lands and Indigenous estate.

Based on that, researchers could downscale the energy system expansion plans from the provincial to the plant level, through model coupling with IAMs (e.g., GCAM-China) or PSMs.

In the space of energy planning, key considerations have always included affordability, reliability and security; in more recent times, these have also come to include resilience, environmental responsibility, inclusivity and economic competitiveness, among others 4.

Some limitations of the study are that it is restricted to solar and wind power infrastructure, to three land availability cases and to Australia. Further, while the costs of electricity transmission lines are considered, their associated land use needs are not.