Stanford Energy Seminar: Low-conflict strategies for getting to gigawatt-scale renewable deployment6/12/2025 Prof Wu gave a talk at the Stanford Energy Seminar hosted by The Precourt Institute for Energy, focused on a big question: How do we build renewable energy at gigawatt scale—without running into conflict on the ground?
I shared completed and ongoing work on:
Check out the video of the full talk here: https://energy.stanford.edu/events/lecturepresentationtalk/stanford-energy-seminar-low-conflict-strategies-getting-gigawatt
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 Prof Wu recently joined the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy's Energy Policy Now podcast at U Penn, hosted by Andy Stone, to talk with Dr. Jonathan Thompson at the Harvard Forest about the land use and siting barriers and impacts of wind and solar energy. As the clean energy transition accelerates, the space it demands—and how we manage that demand—will play a huge role in shaping its future.
We touched on:
Listen here: https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/commentary/podcast/renewable-energys-land-use-reckoning/ Washington Dept. of Commerce and Climate Commitment Act is funding the American Farmland Trust, The Nature Conservancy, UC Santa Barbara, and Washington State University on a project to assess the potential of agrivoltaics in Washington including engaging farming communities to understand challenges and opportunities for agrivoltaics, a state-wide map of agrivoltaic potential and property-specific agrivoltaic models. UCSB (Riley Tinianov and Prof Wu) will lead the development of a coupled PV system and crop model to design agrivoltaic systems that optimize crop productivity and solar electricity generation for multiple farms in Washington. Agrivoltaics is the dual use of land for solar energy production and agriculture, and in the context of this study, it is crop production underneath or adjacent to solar panels. Agrivoltaic systems could play an important role in reducing the land use conflict between solar project development and food production, as new solar power plants are likely to be sited in flat, sunny, and easily accessible locations, characteristics that describe where most of the farmland in the US is located. However, research on optimal agrivoltaic designs in the US is lacking, precluding developers’ and farmers’ ability to assess costs and benefits. TNC's press release Read about the other projects awarded under this grant.  Photo taken at Jack's Solar Garden in Colorado (credit: G.Wu) Dr. Yohan Min joins the lab as a postdoctoral scholar working on the California Climate Action initiative grant on designing equitable grids for disadvantaged communities. He'll be working with the 2035 Initiative's CCA team on household level electrification adoption modeling. Dr. Min joins us from Dartmouth College where he was a postdoctoral scholar advised by Prof. Erin Mayfield.
As part of a Department of Energy SEEDS 4 award, the Spatial Climate Solutions lab as part of the The 2035 Initiative joins a team of researchers, led by the Solar and Storage Industries Institute, to test and evaluate innovative community engagement practices used in large-scale solar project siting and permitting. Dr. Min and Prof. Wu will be working on this project to support the design and deployment of community surveys led by Prof Matto Mildenberger and Dr. Gabe De Roche. See the SSII press release here and DOE press release here.  Ongoing project was featured in the UCSB Current and UC Research and Innovation!
New paper published in Nature Communications on hydropower, wind, and solar in Southern Africa2/12/2024 New paper published in Nature Communications on the costs and carbon benefits of developing wind, solar, and hydropower projects that have lower social and environmental impacts. This is the first study to examine the power system level impacts of lower-impact build-out of hydropower, wind, and solar technologies simultaneously, which is particularly important in hydro-dominated countries in those in Southern Africa. Some highlights from the paper:
Read the policy brief here!  Stiegler's Gorge dam, which would inundate a large portion of Selous Game Reserve (now Nyerere National Park), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was one of the hydropower projects we screened out under our lower impact development scenarios. Image from TanzanianAffairs.org  The Spatial Climate Solutions Lab and the 2035 Initiative at UCSB, along with collaborators Justin Baker at North Carolina State University, Chris Wade at Research Triangle Institute (RTI), and Aline Mosnier at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) were awarded a grant to model US GHG emissions resulting from funding climate smart agricultural practices through the U.S. Farm Bill.
We will be taking a multi-modeling approach that leverages EPA and USDA produced marginal abatement cost curves for particular climate change mitigation agricultural practices and using the US FABLE Calculator to estimate national GHG emissions, land use change, crop production, and biodiversity impacts of various suites of climate smart agriculture funding programs. The UCSB team will consist of 2035 Initiative staff and two Spatial Climate Solutions Lab researchers.  UCSB PIs Grace Wu, Ranjit Deshmukh, Matto Mildenberger, and Michael Ludkovski are part of a multi-UC team including UC San Diego and UC Berkeley that was awarded a $2.8 million UC Climate Action grant.
Deeply reducing energy use emissions while ensuring reliable infrastructure is critical to meet California’s carbon neutrality goals by 2045 (California Air Resources Board 2022 Scoping Plan). Extreme weather events, such as wildfires and heavy precipitation, have increased the complexity of meeting this goal while maintaining reliable electricity services, as evidenced by Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS). Recent literature on grid operations during climate emergencies have revealed significant inequities in the populations most affected by load shedding and restoration prioritization decision-making. In parallel, adoption of end-use electrification and distributed energy resources (DERs, such as PV) in California households are key strategies for a resilient carbon neutral grid. Adoption of these technologies has been inequitable across disadvantaged communities (DACs), intersecting with inequitable electricity reliability in divergent ways. Achieving resiliency in California’s electricity grid, especially in disadvantaged communities, will not only require a technical redesign of our grid’s infrastructure and operation but also a more nuanced understanding of the barriers to climate action and local resilience in the diverse array of communities across our state. The UCSB team (Spatial Climate Solutions Lab, CETLab, and the 2035 Initiative) will be leading Thrust 1: Projecting household electrification and adoption of DERs at the census tract level and under future policy scenarios. In Thrust 2, we will work with community partners in select DACs across California to design microgrid configurations that best meet their needs. Prof. Wu presented results from the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, "Minimizing habitat conflicts in meeting net zero energy targets in the western United States"  |
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