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Candidate Strategy Map for Central Great Plains Wind Energy

Hav­ing com­plet­ed its busi­ness as usu­al maps as shown in the exam­ple above, the Cen­tral Great Plains team then mapped how pro­posed wind facil­i­ties over­lap with sen­si­tive habi­tat areas. Analy­sis of pro­posed facil­i­ties (FAA 2015) indi­cates that 28% of antic­i­pat­ed wind devel­op­ment will occur in sen­si­tive areas under busi­ness as usu­al. Based on pro­jec­tions of 10.4 GW of addi­tion­al wind devel­op­ment in Okla­homa and Kansas by 2040 (USDOE 2015), this strat­e­gy could result in 235,866 acres of avoid­ed devel­op­ment in sen­si­tive areas.

The can­di­date strat­e­gy aims to avoid devel­op­ment in sen­si­tive areas with­out lim­it­ing the amount of wind ener­gy pro­duced. Ener­gy avail­abil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty is an impor­tant con­trib­u­tor to qual­i­ty of life. Even more impor­tant for con­ser­va­tion, wind ener­gy devel­op­ment is an impor­tant com­po­nent of the tran­si­tion to no-car­bon ener­gy that is nec­es­sary to address cli­mate change. To con­firm that it is still pos­si­ble to achieve wind ener­gy pro­duc­tion goals while avoid­ing sen­si­tive areas, the team iden­ti­fied “pro­posed pro­cure­ment areas” out­side of sen­si­tive areas. The analy­sis account­ed for wind speed, rel­a­tive topog­ra­phy, dis­tance to trans­mis­sion, exist­ing wind devel­op­ment, steep slopes, unsuit­able land use, and eco­log­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive areas. Pro­posed pro­cure­ment areas could host 235 GW of wind, over 14 times the pro­ject­ed need for wind devel­op­ment in Okla­homa and Kansas by 2040 (Fig­ure 12)

Complex candidate strategy map seeking efficient spatial solutions for multiple goals.

Fig­ure 12