Wind power potential in low environmental sensitivity areas of Spain: a regional assessment

The main paper describes the methodology. The supplementary materials include a detailed summary of the results for each region. The supplementary materials are available in low and high resolution.

The large-scale deployment of wind power required to meet climate targets increasingly faces challenges related to environmental impacts and social acceptance. In Spain, these challenges have motivated the development of the Environmental Sensitivity Index (ISA), a national zoning tool that classifies the territory according to its environmental sensitivity to wind and solar PV power plants. In this study, we combine the ISA index for wind energy with a high-resolution wind atlas (NEWA) to estimate, for the first time, Spain's wind power potential that is both economically viable and restricted to areas of low environmental sensitivity. Results show that approximately 7.24% of the national territory meets these criteria, corresponding to a techno-economic potential of 361 GW, well above current policy targets. Consequently, land availability is unlikely to be a limiting factor at the national level for a large-scale, economically viable and environmentally-friendly expansion of wind power capacity. However, this potential is highly unevenly distributed across regions, reflecting the heterogeneous spatial patterns of wind resources and low-sensitivity areas. Hence, ad hoc planning criteria, such as imposing uniform wind power capacity densities across regions or pursuing regional energy self-sufficiency, could lead to uneven environmental pressures and inefficient use of the available wind resource. Integrated spatial planning approaches are therefore essential to reconcile climate mitigation objectives with environmental protection and social acceptance.