Land Conservation and the Clean Energy Transition:Evidence from U.S. Wind and Solar Development

We study the interactions between land conservation policy and renewable energy development using over a decade of U.S. wind and solar grid interconnection applications linked to fine-grained geospatial data. A model of competitive site selection shows that the welfare implications of land use protections depend on the correlation between conservation value and private development potential. When this correlation is weak, targeted restrictions can steer projects away from ecologically sensitive areas without meaningfully raising technology deployment costs. Estimating a sequential model of site entry and project advancement, we find that wetlands protections and conservation easements significantly deter development. Correlations between measures of engineering profitability and measures of conservation value are near zero, implying that the landscape is amenable to well-targeted conservation policy. However, our estimates of the ‘soft costs’ imposed by the existing patchwork of restrictions appear substantial. Ongoing counterfactual analysis aims to quantify these compliance burdens and assess how alternative land use regimes could reshape the spatial allocation of renewable energy development.