Abstract

Achieving climate change mitigation goals will likely require increasing the shares of variable renewable energy (VRE) from around 15% today to at least 70% by mid-century. Best-in-class macro-energy systems (MES) models explore important features of potential systems but make computational trade-offs in their resolution of grid features, weather, and land and marine spatial use. In this talk, I will review the main methodological approaches to VRE planning and their limitations, and describe new optimization formulations that co-optimize land, marine and grid impacts. When considering land availability, results show an increasing favorability toward distributed solar over utility-scale, even before considering favorable incentives. Yet, drivers of land and marine spatial availability—including land and marine use policies and social acceptance—are not well characterized in major geographies, nor how they may change over time. Model developments are considering non-linear effects such as land contiguity and heterogeneous project size effects on cost and acceptance.

Bio

Michael Davidson is an associate professor joint with the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department and School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, where he leads the Power Transformation Lab. His teaching and research focus on the engineering implications, institutional conflicts and global value chains inherent in deploying low-carbon energy at scale. Dr. Davidson holds a PhD in engineering systems and a master’s degree in technology and policy from MIT, and bachelor’s degrees in mathematics, physics and Japanese studies from Case Western Reserve University. Prior to his current role, he worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council and held fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School and Tsinghua University. He is a senior associate (non-resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

References, Related Papers

Zhang, D., Zhu, Z., Chen, S., Zhang, C., Lu, X., Zhang, X., … Davidson, M. R. (2024). Spatially resolved land and grid model of carbon neutrality in China. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(10), e2306517121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2306517121

Zhang, Z., Zhu, Z., Gordon, J., Lu, X., Zhang, D., & Davidson, M. R. (2025). Reaching carbon neutrality in China: Temporal and subnational limitations of renewable energy scale-up. Advances in Applied Energy, 100238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adapen.2025.100238