DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4628262
title: Wind and Solar Candidate Project Areas for Princeton Net Zero America Study

description: For visualizing renewable energy Candidate Project Areas (CPAs) using GIS software. A growing number of pledges are being made by major corporations, municipalities, states, and national governments to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 or sooner. This dataset provides granular guidance on what getting to net-zero really requires and on actions needed to translate these pledges into tangible progress. This data set contains the GIS data for solar, land-based wind, and offshore wind Candidate Project Areas (CPAs) under base and constrained land use assumptions (BLUA, CLUA). Each record in this dataset represents a “Candidate Project Area” with attributes such as nameplate capacity, annual generation, model region, distance to transmission, etc. The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab MAPRE tools (https://mapre.lbl.gov/gis-tools/) were used to create this dataset, along with input assumptions adapted from Wu et al 2020 (Grace C Wu <em>et al</em> 2020 <em>Environ. Res. Lett.</em> 15 074044). A full description of the processes used to generate this dataset can be found in Annex D of the main NZA report. The main report and report annexes can be found at https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/.
description: Field definitions: OBJECTID This field is automatically created by ArcMap software. Ignore. Area_km2 Area of the Candidate Project Area (km2) eGrid_to_E Indicates which model region the candidate project area is located d_road_km Distance to the nearest road (km) (source: ArcGIS) m_slope Mean slope for the Candidate Project Area (degrees) (source: USGS 2011) m_popden Population density (person/km2) (source: Landscan) m_GHI Mean Annual Global Horizontal Irradiance (source: NREL NSRDB) m_cf Annual capacity factor (%) (source: analysis using LBNL MAPRE GIS tools) egen Annual Generation (MWh) (source: analysis using LBNL MAPRE GIS tools) incap Nameplate Capacity (MW ac) (source: analysis using LBNL MAPRE GIS tools) STATE_NAME Self-Explanatory STATE_ABBR Self-Explanatory Country Self-Explanatory sub_ID Feature ID of the nearest existing substation with voltage &gt;= 161 kV (source: HIFLD 2019) d_sub_161k Distance to the nearest existing substation with voltage &gt;= 161 kV (km) (source: HIFLD 2019) d_sub_load Distance from the nearest existing substation with voltage &gt;= 161 kV (km) to the nearest electric load center, defined as Census Bureau Metropolitan Statistical Area with population &gt;= 750,000 (source: U.S. Census Bureau 2016) Longitude Coordinates of centroid, (decimal degrees) Latitude Coordinates of centroid, (decimal degrees) Shape_Length This field is automatically created by ArcMap software. Ignore. Shape_Area This field is automatically created by ArcMap software. Ignore. Field values: Shape [point, polyline, polygon] eGrid_to_E [California, Desert_Southwest, Florida, Louisiana_and_Ozarks, Lower_Midwest , Mid_Atlantic_and_Great_Lakes, New_England , New_York, Pacific_Northwest , Rocky_Mountains, Southeast, Texas, Upper_Midwest, Utah_Nevada] State [all states except for Alaska and Hawaii, plus the District of Columbia]