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Booming solar energy is encroaching on cropland

The rapid spread of solar power plants onto cropland is having increasingly detrimental impacts. Targeted policy and technological solutions are urgently needed to resolve the tension between renewable energy and food production.

The spatial mismatch between energy demand and supply in China exacerbates the situation. Production of solar energy is shifting from the land- and solar-radiation-rich west of China towards the east, where energy demand and markets are well developed (Fig. 2e). Western China’s contribution to new national solar capacity has declined rapidly in the last decade, from 82% in 2012 to 21% in 2021, and may continue to decline to 15% by 2060, while eastern China’s share continues to grow (Fig. 2b). Eastern China, a hub of industry and economy, drives 47% of the nation’s electricity demand and contributed 52% to its GDP in 2021. However, the region faces land scarcity and high population density, with 40% of China’s population residing on just 10% of its land. With a population of 1.4 billion, China requires a minimum of 1.2 million square kilometres of arable land to feed its people — the ‘red line’ for food security that officials have pledged to protect. As of 2021, there were only 1.28 million square kilometres of arable land remaining, bringing the ‘red line’ worryingly close4. This situation is particularly evident in eastern China, where cropland per capita is only one-third of that in western China (Fig. 2d,e).

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Fig. 1

Visual China (2021)

Fig. 2: The development of solar energy in China from 2000 to the present, with projections after 2020 to 2060, and associated spatial factors.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate support from the China National Key R&D Plan (2018YFB1502804).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER), Dresden, Germany

    Ning Zhang

  2. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, China

    Huabo Duan & Jiakuan Yang

  3. School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Yuli Shan

  4. Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, Yale University, New Haven, USA

    T. Reed Miller

  5. Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Xuemei Bai

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  1. Ning Zhang
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Zhang, N., Duan, H., Shan, Y. et al. Booming solar energy is encroaching on cropland.
Nat. Geosci. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01304-1

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  • Published: 06 November 2023

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01304-1

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