Fig. 4.40 Alternative Futures Analysis of Land Requirements Observations. An unconstrained energy future with high energy intensiveness will likely result in much larger land requirements than used today. With SPS deployment, land requirements go up even higher. If TPV were to be deployed at a higher rate, further increases would be required. Without deploying SPS, it may be possible to keep land requirements for baseload energy production within a factor of two of today’s requirements if lower energy intensiveness prevails. In scenario CI, considered to be the most likely, deployment of SPS would itself result in the use of about 75% more land than the 1980 estimate for all technologies. Without SPS, the 1980 and 2030 figures are about equal in that scenario. This analysis does not address the issue of acquisition of the needed land areas. Acquisiton may prove to be a difficult constraint in the case of the SPS, which requires large amounts of contiguous land in the current baseline design. A mitigating strategy is to reduce the size of the rectenna, which would decrease the installed capacity if power densities cannot be increased appropriately. Since the question of land use is likely to play an important role in the siting of future energy technologies, the effects of SPS deployment and/or highly energy-intensive economies must not be overlooked.
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