Beyond Prime Farmland: Solar Siting Tradeoffs for Cost-Effective Decarbonization

TL;DR

This study quantifies the trade-offs between land types for solar PV siting in the Eastern U.S., highlighting cost differences and potential land use conflicts to inform policy for decarbonization.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive database of solar supply curves by land type and analyzes cost-capacity trade-offs for different siting scenarios in the Eastern U.S.

Findings

Greenfield sites, especially prime agricultural lands, are the cheapest for capacity.

Contaminated lands have limited potential and higher costs.

Rooftop PV can meet capacity needs but at higher costs.

Abstract

The feasibility and cost-effectiveness of continued growth in solar photovoltaics are closely tied to siting decisions. But trade-offs between costs and technical potential between land categories, especially brownfields and rooftop sites, have not been quantified, despite increasing resistance to and policy interest in reducing use of greenfield sites (e.g., prime agricultural lands). We examine the effect of siting decisions across land types for utility-scale and rooftop PV on the feasibility and cost of meeting solar deployment targets across the Eastern U.S. We build a database of solar PV supply curves by land type for each county in the Eastern Interconnect (EI) region (~2,400 counties). Our supply curves quantify technical potential versus levelized cost across greenfield, brownfield, and rooftop land types. With these supply curves and a 2035 solar deployment target (435 GW) aligned with a decarbonized power system, we quantify cost and capacity trade-offs using scenarios that prioritize solar PV deployment on different land types. We find greenfield, particularly prime agriculture, sites offer the lowest levelized costs for meeting capacity targets, of 39 to 57 $/MWh. Contaminated lands, often prioritized in policy to reduce land use conflict, have limited technical potential and impose a cost premium of 14-33% relative to greenfield sites. Rooftop PV provides enough technical potential for meeting capacity targets but comes at consistently higher costs, with minimum LCOEs of roughly 70 $/MWh or well above the highest-cost greenfield sites. Our results detail heterogeneous siting trade-offs across the Eastern United States, enabling targeted policy design to meet deployment targets while balancing costs and land use conflicts.