Solar Techno-economic Exclusion

The site suitability criteria included in the techno-economic land use screens are listed below. As this list is an update to previous cycles, tribal lands, prime farmland, and flood zones are not included as they are not technically infeasible for development. The techno-economic site suitability exclusion thresholds are presented in Table 1. Distances indicate the minimum distance from each feature for commercial scale solar development. Attributes: Steeply sloped areas: change in vertical elevation compared to horizontal distance Population density: the number of people living in a 1 km^{2 }area Urban areas: defined by the U.S. Census.⁸ Water bodies: defined by the U.S. National Atlas Water Feature Areas, available from Argonne National Lab Energy Zone Mapping Tool⁹ Railways: a comprehensive database of North America's railway system from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), available from Argonne National Lab Energy Zone Mapping Tool Major highways: available from ESRI Living Atlas¹⁰ Airports: The Airports dataset including other aviation facilities as of July 13, 2018 is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)/Bureau of Transportation Statistics' (BTS's) National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD). The Airports database is a geographic point database of aircraft landing facilities in the United States and U.S. Territories. Attribute data is provided on the physical and operational characteristics of the landing facility, current usage including enplanements and aircraft operations, congestion levels and usage categories. This geospatial data is derived from the FAA's National Airspace System Resource Aeronautical Data Product. Available from Argonne National Lab Energy Zone Mapping Tool Active mines: Active Mines and Mineral Processing Plants in the United States in 2003¹¹ Military Lands: Land owned by the federal government that is part of a US military base, camp, post, station, yard, center or installation. Table 1 ────────────────────┬──────── │Solar ────────────────────┼──────── Steeply sloped areas│>10^{o} ────────────────────┼──────── Population density │>100/km² ────────────────────┼──────── Capacity factor │<20% ────────────────────┼──────── Urban areas │<500 m ────────────────────┼──────── Water bodies │<250 m ────────────────────┼──────── Railways │<30 m ────────────────────┼──────── Major highways │<125 m ────────────────────┼──────── Airports │<1000 m ────────────────────┼──────── Active mines │<1000 m ────────────────────┼──────── Military Lands │<1000m ────────────────────┴──────── For more information about the processes and sources used to develop the screening criteria see sources 1-7 in the footnotes. Data updates occur as needed, corresponding to typical 3-year CPUC IRP planning cycles. Footnotes: [1] Lopez, A. et. al. “U.S. Renewable Energy Technical Potentials: A GIS-Based Analysis,” 2012. [https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51946.pdf] [2] [https://greeningthegrid.org/Renewable-Energy-Zones-Toolkit/topics/social-environmental-and-other-impacts#ReadingListAndCaseStudies] [3] Multi-Criteria Analysis for Renewable Energy (MapRE), University of California Santa Barbara. [https://mapre.es.ucsb.edu/] [4] Larson, E. et. al. “Net-Zero America: Potential Pathways, Infrastructure, and Impacts, Interim Report.” Princeton University, 2020. [https://environmenthalfcentury.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf331/files/2020-12/Princeton_NZA_Interim_Report_15_Dec_2020_FINAL.pdf]. [5] Wu, G. et. al. “Low-Impact Land Use Pathways to Deep Decarbonization of Electricity.” Environmental Research Letters 15, no. 7 (July 10, 2020). [https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab87d1]. [6] RETI Coordinating Committee, RETI Stakeholder Steering Committee. “Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative Phase 1B Final Report.” California Energy Commission, January 2009. [7] Pletka, Ryan, and Joshua Finn. “Western Renewable Energy Zones, Phase 1: QRA Identification Technical Report.” Black & Veatch and National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2009. [https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy10osti/46877.pdf]. [8] [https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php?year=2019&layergroup=Urban+Areas] [9] https://ezmt.anl.gov/ [10] https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=fc870766a3994111bce4a083413988e4 [11] [https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mineplant/] ### Credits Title: Techno-economic screening criteria for utility-scale solar photovoltaic energy installations for Integrated Resource Planning Purpose for creation: These exclusion criteria are for use in electric system planning, capacity expansion modeling, and integrated resource planning. Keywords: solar, photovoltaic, resource potential, techno-economic, PV, IRP Extent: western states of the contiguous U.S. ### Use Limitations The geospatial data created by the use of these techno-economic screens inform high-level estimates of technical renewable resource potential for electric system planning and should not be used, on their own, to guide siting of generation projects nor assess project-level impacts. Confidentiality: Public ### Contact Emily Leslie [Emily@MontaraMtEnergy.com] Sam Schreiber [sam.schreiber@ethree.com] Jared Ferguson [Jared.Ferguson@cpuc.ca.gov] Oluwafemi Sawyerr [femi@ethree.com]