The Renewables Grid Initiative (RGI), partner of the PAC project, analysed the space and water requirements to achieve the ambitious decarbonisation pathway proposed by the PAC project and other three energy system modelling scenarios. RGI launched an interactive tool and detailed report to explore these results.
While a speedy energy transition will play a crucial role in European strategies to decarbonise, renewables and the grid infrastructure will require space both on land and at sea.
Space is a limited and precious resource that can be used in several ways, including nature protection, urban development, agriculture, as well as renewable energy infrastructure. This can lead to increased competition over the limited available space, as well as conflicts between different stakeholders’ interests.
Although there is a general consensus on the need for renewables and grid infrastructure, the current lack of public information on the needed spatial and water requirements poses a challenge towards the implementation of new energy projects and concurrent policy developments.
Considering this challenge, the Renewables Grid Initiative commissioned the Reiner Lemoine Institute (RLI) to model the spatial and water requirements for four decarbonisation scenarios, including the PAC scenario, the CLEVER scenario and the TYNDP 2022 Distributed Energy and Global Ambition scenarios.
The PAC scenario scored the lowest in terms of space needs across Europe. The results of this analysis are now available in an interactive tool that provides detailed information on national and EU levels. A summary report also offers some insights into the study. The study results were also discussed during RGI’s Energy&Space workshop in Brussels, on 27 September 2023.
PAC Scenario 2.0 Results: Spatial requirements on land and sea until 2050 including wind (onshore and offshore), PV (excluding rooftops), grids, electrolysers and hydrogen storage until 2050. The space needs are the lowest total of the four scenarios and add up to 111.514km2.
