The U.S. can likely achieve its goal to achieve 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035 if it uses less than 5% of the federal land suitable for renewable energy installations, found researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
Motivated by a growing interest in renewable energy development, the researchers designed the study, Land of Opportunity: Potential for Renewable Energy on Federal Lands, to answer two primary questions:
- What is the renewable energy technical potential on federal lands in the contiguous United States?
- How much renewable energy capacity is projected to be developed on federal lands under decarbonization scenarios for the United States?
Currently, only 4% (8.9 GW) of ground-based utility-scale renewable energy capacity in the U.S. is located on federal land, compared to 12% for oil drilling and 11% for natural gas production, according to NREL.
Technical potential is the maximum amount of a resource that is available after siting and other development constraints. It can be measured in terms of land area, nameplate capacity, or electric generation.
Less than 5% of the federal land that is suitable for renewable energy development is needed to meet future energy demands, the report said.
In most scenarios, less than two million of these acres would need to be developed to achieve a carbon-free electricity by 2035 under most the scenarios the researchers developed. Of the 2 million acres of federal land needed to meet carbon-free electricity within the next ten years, less than 0.2% (815,000 acres) of the federal lands would be permanently disturbed by the solar, wind and geothermal installations.
Image: Bureau of Land Management
In total, NREL estimated there is technical potential for 5,750 GW of utility-scale solar on 44 million acres of developable federal land across the United States. (While this article focuses on the study’s solar findings, the researchers also looked at wind, hydrothermal and geothermal energy generation.)
Image: Bureau of Land Management
Recent federal efforts for an increase in clean energy are in part being driven by the decline in generation costs of wind and solar, as well as clean energy policies at the state level. According to the report, there were 29 state renewable portfolio standards and 16 clean energy standards enacted in 29 states as of 2024.
“DOE is a data-driven agency and the data shows that the nation’s growing energy demand can be met with cleaner, cheaper, more resilient power,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said in a press release.
The researchers incorporated perspectives with the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense (DOD) and other federal agencies to develop a geospatial model for estimating the technical potential available for land-based renewable energy installations.
“Each agency has its own mission priorities, which has implications for how its land is managed,” said Anthony Lopez, a senior researcher at NREL.
The researchers determined the distribution of technical potential among lands administered by federal agencies by the
- amount of land administered,
- suitability of the land for RE development, and
- renewable energy resource and technology.
“We determined the technical potential by limiting renewable energy development based on other land uses, such as recreation, historic preservation, conservation, and critical habitat,” Lopez said. “Even when factoring in the other uses, we found a lot of remaining land area would be suitable for renewable energy development.”
However, public lands serve many public needs, so NREL said “any decision about their use involves trade-offs.” Land administrators must balance various priorities, and they may have limited experience with renewable energy development.
“Collaboration is crucial to support these agencies in navigating competing interests while integrating renewable energy development responsibly,” said Melinda Marquis, energy systems researcher at NREL.
DOD is the largest energy consumer in the U.S., responsible for about 1% of the total energy used and 77% of the energy used by the federal government.
Previous research published in December from NREL found between 861 GW and 1,042 GW of potential for floating solar generation capacity on federally controlled U.S. reservoirs.
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