Socio-economic and environmental impacts of renewable energy deployments: A review

Mitigating global warming requires the rapid deployment of renewable energy (RE) systems throughout all parts of the world economy. A crucial step for such deployments is the assessment of their social, economic and environmental impacts. By reviewing three hundred and sixty-nine studies, this work identifies and synthesises a myriad of social, economic and environmental aspects of RE technologies deployment that have been studied over the past decade. The review identifies barriers and drivers that have been found to be common across countries, and those where studies and/or local contexts have found contradictory results. Amongst social issues, trust and quality of institutional governance were found to be increasingly prominent themes of research and key drivers for RE deployment. The review also reveals a growing interest in attachment to place, but with contradicting findings for its negative or positive impacts. Amongst economic issues, the review found widespread agreement that, irrespective of the type of economy, countries continue to preferentially pursue economic growth through expanded production and innovation in fossil fuels. The review of the environmental impacts found that studies of RE deployments tend to focus on negative local impacts, leaving positive global benefits, such as mitigating climate change, as implicit, and that there are only a few studies on the environmental impacts of RE in developing economies. Two gaps that the review identifies as demanding future work are investigating the benefits of RE co-location in developing economies and redressing the underrepresentation of First Nations perspectives and participation in research and RE deployments.