Rethinking and reconciling the land–energy conflicts from centralized photovoltaics in China

As the world accelerates its low-carbon transition, the rapid expansion of centralized solar photovoltaics (PV) has received extensive concerns on land-use competition and environmental trade-offs. Here we construct a spatially explicit assessment framework to quantify the ecological and economic implications of PV land occupation across 367 mainland Chinese cities in 31 provinces. We integrate high-resolution PV infrastructure mapping with baseline land-use classifications and region-specific indicators of land productivity, economic output, and terrestrial carbon sequestration. This combined dataset is used to estimate land occupation, food loss, and reductions in terrestrial carbon sinks, and to design city-level spatial optimization and wind–solar substitution scenarios. enabling a comprehensive. By 2020, centralized PV installations occupied 1910 ± 116 km2 of land, and the footprint is projected to exceed 30,000 km2 by 2060. While grasslands and barren lands comprise the largest shares by area, cropland, occupying only 22 % of the total land, accounts for most agricultural and carbon sink losses due to its high biomass productivity. Moreover, the study also identified widespread land–value mismatches, where many cities disproportionately convert their most economically valuable land. City-level spatial optimization scenarios show that relocating 30 % of PV to lower-value land could halve food and carbon sink losses, and that substituting terrestrial and offshore wind for PV in selected cities could probably reduce land use by more than 90 %. These findings highlight the need to integrate ecological and economic value into solar siting and national decarbonization planning.