Standardized metrics to quantify solar energy-land relationships: A global systematic review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Ground-mounted solar energy installations, including photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP), can have significant environmental, ecological, and sociocultural effects via land-use and land-cover change (LULCC). Research in disciplines ranging from engineering to environmental policy seeks to quantify solar energy-land (SE-land) interactions to better understand the comprehensive impacts of solar energy installations on society. However, increasing evidence shows that scholars across research disciplines employ disparate metrics to quantify SE-land interactions. While solar energy deployment helps to achieve progress toward sustainable development goals (SDG 7- affordable and clean energy), the inconsistent use of metrics to describe SE-land interactions may inhibit the understanding of the total environmental and ecological impacts of solar energy installations, potentially causing barriers to achieve concurrent SDG's such as life on land (SDG 15). We systematically reviewed 608 sources on SE-land relationships globally to identify and assess the most frequent metric terms and units used in published studies. In total, we identified 51 unique metric terms and 34 different units of measure describing SE-land relationships across 18 countries of author origin. We organized these findings into three distinct metric categories: (1) capacity-based (i.e., nominal), (2) generation-based, and (3) human population-based. We used the most frequently reported terms and units in each category to inform a standardized suite of metrics, which are: land-use efficiency (W/m2), annual and lifetime land transformation (m2/Wh), and solar footprint (m2/capita). This framework can facilitate greater consistency in the reporting of SE-land metrics and improved capacity for comparison and aggregations of trends, including SE-land modeling projections. Our study addresses the need for standardization while acknowledging the role for future methodological advancements. The results of our study may help guide scholars toward a common vernacular and application of metrics to inform decisions about solar energy development.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.028 | 0.123 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.040 | 0.046 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".