The need to mit­i­gate cli­mate change, safe­guard ener­gy secu­ri­ty, and increase the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of human activ­i­ties is prompt­ing a rapid and glob­al tran­si­tion from car­bon-inten­sive fuels to renew­able ener­gy (IPCC 2014). Among renew­able ener­gy sys­tems, solar ener­gy has one of the great­est cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion poten­tials with life cycle emis­sions as low as 14 g CO₂-eq KWh^-1 (car­bon diox­ide equiv­a­lent per kilo­watt hour; com­pare this to 608 g CO₂-eq KWh^-1 for nat­ur­al gas). Solar ener­gy embod­ies diverse tech­nolo­gies able to cap­ture the sun’s ther­mal ener­gy, such as con­cen­trat­ing solar pow­er (CSP) sys­tems, and pho­tons using pho­to­voltaics (PV). Solar ener­gy sys­tems are high­ly mod­u­lar rang­ing from small-scale deploy­ments (≤ 1 megawatt [MW]; e.g., res­i­den­tial rooftop mod­ules, portable bat­tle­field sys­tems, solar water heaters) to cen­tral­ized, util­i­ty-scale solar ener­gy instal­la­tions (USSE, ≥1 MW) where a large econ­o­my of scale can meet greater ener­gy demands. Nonethe­less, the dif­fuse nature of solar ener­gy neces­si­tates that large swaths of space or land be used to col­lect and con­cen­trate solar ener­gy into forms usable for human con­sump­tion, increas­ing con­cern over poten­tial impacts on nat­ur­al ecosys­tems, their ser­vices, and bio­di­ver­si­ty there­in. For exam­ple, at a capac­i­ty fac­tor of 0.20, a sin­gle ter­awatt of USSE capac­i­ty scales to 142,857 km², rough­ly the area of the state of New York, USA, pro­vid­ing chal­lenges for the inte­gra­tion of poten­tial­ly mas­sive projects into com­plex and frag­ment­ed landscapes.

The deci­sions humans make about how much land to use, where, and for what end-use are dri­vers of Earth sys­tem process­es. For exam­ple, chang­ing the use of land or con­vert­ing it from one land-cov­er type to anoth­er is a source of green­house gas emis­sions, which are released to the atmos­phere when bio­mass, includ­ing soil, is dis­turbed or removed. How then do we decide when to con­vert a for­est that serves as a car­bon sink into a farm that feeds a com­mu­ni­ty, or a farm into a PV park that elec­tri­fies a rur­al vil­lage? Inno­va­tion and poli­cies direct­ing sus­tain­able path­ways of land use for ener­gy and food pro­duc­tion can be uti­lized to address an increas­ing glob­al pop­u­la­tion of which 1.5 bil­lion today live with­out access to elec­tric­i­ty. Ener­gy pover­ty leads to a loss of human health and well­be­ing and depressed eco­nom­ic and edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly for women and chil­dren. Our research here is designed to demon­strate, quan­ti­fy, and facil­i­tate the poten­tial of solar ener­gy sys­tems to address glob­al prob­lems relat­ed to cli­mate change, ener­gy access, and the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of food sys­tems, which are inter­con­nect­ed. This research draws from eco­log­i­cal field exper­i­ments, knowl­edge data dis­cov­ery, geo­graph­ic infor­ma­tion sys­tems, spa­tial and eco­nom­ic mod­el­ing, and is com­prised of five inter­re­lat­ed projects:

1. Envi­ron­men­tal co-ben­e­fits of solar energy
2. The Ener­gy-Food-Water Cube: Capa­bil­i­ty and scal­a­bil­i­ty in on-farm ener­gy production
3. Glob­al solar ener­gy brightspots: Shin­ning light on the world’s ener­gy insecure
4. The land-ener­gy-food nexus in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Cen­tral Valley
5. Lim­its of land: Glob­al esti­mates of land for food and energy