The Financial and Environmental Consequences of Renewable Energy Exclusion Zones

As countries decarbonise, the competition for land between energy generation, nature conservation and food production will likely increase. To counter this, modelling, and sometimes energy policies, use exclusion zones to restrict energy deployment from land deemed as important to society. This paper applies the spatially-explicit ADVENT-NEV model to Great Britain to determine the cost imposed on the energy system when either environmental or food production exclusion zones are applied. Results show that exclusion zones impose a cost of up to £0.63 billion (B), £19.17 B and £1.33 B for the solar, wind, and bioenergy pathways. These costs give an indication of the value being placed on protecting these areas of land. When multiple exclusions are imposed on bioenergy, the high pathway is infeasible indicating a more flexible approach may be needed to meet net zero ambitions. The model also shows how the value of ecosystem services changes when exclusion zones are applied, highlighting how some exclusions increase non-market costs whereas others decrease them. In several cases exclusion zones are shown to increase social costs, the opposite of their intended use. For these exclusions to be justifiable, the unobserved values missing from the model must be as large as these increases.