The Tiger and the Sun: Solar Power Plants and Wildlife Sanctuaries

TL;DR

This paper explores the land use and ecological impacts of developing large-scale solar power plants alongside wildlife sanctuaries, analyzing their growth and interaction over the period 2010-2050.

Contribution

It introduces integrated models to evaluate the coexistence and scalability of solar energy infrastructure and wildlife conservation efforts.

Findings

Quantifies land requirements for solar and wildlife sanctuaries.

Models population dynamics of tigers and solar energy over 40 years.

Provides insights into sustainable land use planning.

Abstract

We discuss separate and integrated approaches to building scalable solar power plants and wildlife sanctuaries. Both solar power plants and wildlife sanctuaries need a lot of land. We quantify some of the requirements using various estimates of the rate of solar power production as well as the rate of adding wildlife to a sanctuary over the time range 2010-2050. We use population dynamics equations to study the evolution of solar energy and tiger populations up to and beyond 2050.