Beyond renewable energy targets: Understanding the land use implications of solar energy facilities in Continental Portugal

Abstract

The growing demand for land to accommodate renewable energy infrastructure has intensified competition with biodiversity conservation, agriculture, and ecosystem services. In Portugal, electricity system decarbonisation relies heavily on utility-scale solar energy (USSE) facilities, yet the spatial extent of land transformation associated with photovoltaic development has not been systematically assessed. This study provides an assessment of the land occupancy of USSE facilities and associated land use and land cover (LULC) changes in continental Portugal over the past two decades, as well as their spatial relationship with areas designated for land and nature conservation. A geospatial database of USSE installations (≥1 MW) was developed through the integration of multiple data sources using geographic information systems (GIS). The geometric consistency of spatial features was ensured through harmonisation and validation procedures involving GIS-based corrections supported by Sentinel-2 satellite imagery. Spatial overlay analyses were conducted with multitemporal LULC datasets and with land-use planning constraints, including areas classified for nature conservation, ecological reserves, and agricultural reserves. The results indicate that USSE deployment has been predominantly located in the southern regions of Portugal, although the location of planned projects indicates a northward shift. The implementation of USSE facilities has been mainly associated with LULC changes in forest land, agricultural areas, pastures and shrubland. Spatial overlaps were observed with areas classified within the national ecological and agricultural reserves. These patterns may be indicative of growing land-use conflicts, but the extent to which these developments align with land-use planning objectives and conservation priorities requires further examination.

Keywords

Energy geography / Renewable energy expansion / Solar power plants / Land use change / Protected areas / Spatial planning

CRediT authorship contribution statement

André Alves: Writing - original draft, Visualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Eduardo Gomes: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Conceptualization. Eduarda Marques da Costa: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Conceptualization. Mário Caetano: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Methodology, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the doctoral scholarship of the author, André Alves, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the MIT Portugal Programme (PRT/BD/154418/2023) and the State Budget. Further support, also provided through FCT funding, was received from the MOPT Research Group of the Centre of Geographical Studies, University of Lisbon (UID/295/2025, DOI: 10.54499/UID/00295/2025), and from the Centro de Investigação em Gestão de Informação (MagIC) under the projects UID/04152/2025 (DOI: 10.54499/UID/04152/2025; 2025-01-01 to 2028-12-31) and UID/PRR/04152/2025 (DOI: 10.54499/UID/PRR/04152/2025; 2025-01-01 to 2026-06-30). The authors are grateful to Francisco Penim and Francisco Moreira, research fellows at the Portuguese Directorate-General for the Territory, for their assistance in preparing the data on solar energy facilities. The authors also acknowledge the four anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.geosus.2026.100406.

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