Environmental impact assessment of concentrated solar power plants

Abstract

Nowadays, concentrated solar power plants are widely used to respond to the continuous rise in energy consumption in the world. By 2030, these plants together with other clean and sustainable energy providers, will completely replace the use of fossil resources. Therefore, it is important to study the effect that may have a solar power plant implementation on its surrounding environment. The aim of this project is to fully understand these environmental implications. To reach that knowledge, the consequences on the physical environment in terms of flora, fauna and water usage will be taken into account, as well as social, cultural and health impacts. Subsequently, an assessment framework including all these parameters will be created. This work will help evaluating the environmental impact of the plant and how the drawbacks regarding the environment can be reduced. During the project, several conclusions will be drawn from the assessment framework. It will be proved how the majority of the negative and harmful impacts will appear during the construction phase. Moreover, it will be observed how during the operational phase of the plant these impacts will reduce its negativity due to the environmental adaptation. Finally, more than the half of these impacts will be positive after the dismantling phase because the initial state of the land will be recovered. This report proposes the study of the environmental impacts of a CSP plant and states that there is still future work to do in order to reduce them. Nowadays, new technologies are constantly evolving and these should be used for the reduction of the CSP installation drawbacks.