Contrasting Responses of Wind and Solar Energy Potential to Forestation-Induced Climate Feedbacks

Forestation and renewable energy sources are both critical tools for climate mitigation and human sustainable development. However, climate feedback from forestation, such as changes in wind speed and downwelling shortwave radiation following forestation driven by modified land-atmosphere heat, momentum, and moisture exchanges, could potentially compromise the availability of weather-dependent renewable energy. Here, based on coupled land-atmosphere simulations with contrasting forest distributions, our results showed that, in idealized forestation scenarios, pixels of forestation remaining suitable for renewable energy deployment are projected to experience a 27.8 ± 1.1% decline in wind energy potential and a 1.9 ± 0.1% reduction in solar energy potential. For the future emission scenario of SSP1-2.6, which is compatible with the goal of the Paris Agreement that limits global warming below 2 °C, forestation-driven reduction (-9.5 ± 1.9%) in wind energy potential for current onshore wind installations can even surpass that caused by climate change (-2.1 ± 1.5%). In contrast, solar energy change for current onshore solar installations in the SSP1-2.6 scenario is projected to be dominated by climate-driven increases (+3.9 ± 0.7%) rather than forestation-induced change (+0.3 ± 0.2%). Our study highlights the need to account for the trade-off between forestation-based carbon removal and renewable-based emission reduction when formulating climate mitigation pathways.