Increased terrestrial ecosystem carbon storage associated with global utility-scale photovoltaic installation

Utility-scale photovoltaic (USPV) stands out as one of the foremost renewable energy technologies crucial for achieving global climate targets, owing to its low carbon footprint. While individual case studies exist, a comprehensive global analysis of the impacts of USPV deployment on land-cover changes and subsequent carbon pool dynamics across diverse ecosystems remains lacking. Here we show that worldwide deployment of USPV plants between 2000 and 2018 would increase the carbon pool of the hosting ecosystem by a total of 2.1 TgC over their lifespans, as revealed by the ensemble mean of multiple datasets. Although the carbon pool changes associated with global USPV deployment currently contribute approximately $${15.9}_{-5.8}^{+1.0}\%$$ ( $${{{\mathrm{ensemble}}\; {\mathrm{mean}}}}_{-{{\mathrm{difference}}\; {\mathrm{to}}\; {\mathrm{percentile}}}\,25}^{+{{\mathrm{difference}}\; {\mathrm{to}}\; {\mathrm{percentile}}}\,75}$$ ) (or an average absolute carbon footprint of approximately $${10.5}_{-3.8}^{+0.5}\,{\mathrm{g}}$$ CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour) of the carbon footprint of USPV plants, this share is projected to increase by around 7-fold by 2050, driven primarily by decreasing photovoltaic manufacturing emissions. Notably, optimizing land management strategies can potentially enhance carbon density in the hosting ecosystem of existing USPV plants by approximately $${3.0}_{-0.4}^{+3.7}\,{\mathrm{kgC}}\,{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}$$ , thereby facilitating an average reduction of $${4.3}_{-0.2}^{+9.3}\%$$ in the carbon footprint of these USPV plants. A utility-based assessment shows that the global installation of photovoltaic plants to harness solar energy between 2000 and 2018 led to an increase in terrestrial ecosystem carbon pools of 2.1 TgC.