Soil and renewable energies - Final report, June 2023

The development of renewable energies (RE) is one of the most important ways to move away from the use of fossil fuels, a major cause of climate change. The development of these energies also makes it possible to locate energy production in France, which suffers from a high level of energy dependence on imports: oil, gas and uranium. France is committed to ensuring that 32% of the energy consumed in France and 40% of the electricity produced is of renewable origin by 2030, with the aim of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. However, renewable energies have environmental impacts, particularly on the soil. Soil is one of the major global challenges, a limited resource on a global sca le and nonrenewable on a human life scale. It is essential for maintaining human activities, food security, achieving carbon neutrality, the health of populations, and the preservation of biodiversity and ecosystems. This study aims to evaluate the surface areas necessary for the development of renewable energy production. Based on literature and project analyses, it proposes surface references to installed capacity or energy produced and use them to evaluate the surface areas required to achieve the objective of carbon neutrality in 2050 according to the scenarios pro posed by ADEME in Transition(s) 2050 (ADEME, 2021). It distinguishes between indicators related to the need for land, competing uses, and soil sealing in order to identify the challenges for each sector. The analysis identified several challenges for land and its use with regard to the deployment of renewable energies in mainland France, in particular: Renewable energies should be very present in the rural world. In 2050, the total surface area linked to infrastructures could represent between 1.5 and 1.7% of the territory of mainland France, while the surface area required for the production of biomass energy would be at least four times greater than in 2020. The possibilities for 'land sharing' are significant: onshore wind power and agriculture, production of timber and wood energy, agrivoltaics or development of cover crops for biogas product ion. These approaches should be promoted and will contribute to a significant reduction in the impact of renewable energy deployment on land use. The development of bioenergy should significantly affect cropping systems and forest management. Current cropping systems will have to adapt to the development of plant cover and the use of digest ate as a fertiliser, and forestry systems will have to adapt to meet the increased demand for wood energy for industrial and collective sectors. These elements highlight the importance of respecting good practices to preserve the soil. This summary document is supplemented by specific documents for the renewable energy sectors: onshore wind, offshore wind, photovoltaic solar, industrial and collective wood energy, methanization and biofuels. These documents specify the calculation hypotheses and the impacts on soil quality. (authors)