Page - 21 - in options, Volume winter 2021

As more countries try to reach net carbon neutrality, the use of renewable energies like wind power have also increased. Brazil has seen a ten-fold increase in wind power capacity in the last decade, and plans to double that by 2029. Although wind power has a relatively small carbon footprint, its infrastructure expansion has significant land-use impacts. IIASA researcher Aline Soterroni contributed to a study that explored the land-use impacts of Brazil’s wind power development in the past and possibilities for reducing environmental risks from future wind power expansion. Currently, most of Brazil’s onshore wind parks are concentrated in ecosystems prone to degradation, desertification, and species extinction such as an understudied Brazilian ecoregion known as the Caatinga. “The Caatinga biome in Brazil is the largest and most diverse dry forest of the Americas. Most current and planned wind farms are in this biome, which greatly overlaps with biodiversity priority areas,” explains Soterroni. The study shows that future wind power deployment can be fully integrated with human-altered lands. Resources for this are available and would reduce further impacts in vulnerable areas. “In Brazil, wind parks are sometimes a sensitive subject as land owners have historically not been properly compensated for the use of their land. This makes the issue a bit more complicated. Further research may be needed to consider the tradeoffs between clean energy, biodiversity preservation, and socioeconomic goals,” concludes lead researcher Olga Turkovska from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna. While there is mounting evidence on the large economic cost of policy interventions aimed at containing the progression of COVID-19, little is known about the cost of inaction, which is tantamount to a strategy that seeks to reach herd immunity through infection. In their study, IIASA Economic Frontiers Program Director Michael Kuhn and his coauthors assessed the economic burden that such an approach would have imposed on the United States. The study shows that a lack of behavioral or policy responses to COVID-19 would have cost the USA’s GDP as much as US $1.4 trillion by 2030. Furthermore, when accounting for the value of lives lost, the total economic burden in that time could have reached as high as $94 trillion. “Our study provides an estimate of the minimum economic cost of COVID-19 (the cost faced through loss in labor due to morbidity and mortality, and through loss in capital investments due to treatment costs) calculated for the case that there are no private or public measures limiting the spread of the disease,” explains Kuhn. “If you add to this the value of lives lost, the cost becomes staggering. All of this should be further proof that large-scale investments into the development of vaccines and the resilience of health care systems to cope with pandemic crises yield huge returns for all of us." Native vegetation Anthropogenic land Coastal sands Wind cluster type Figure: Difference in net land-use and land cover change (LUCC) among wind cluster types. The X-axis shows the type of the wind cluster. The Y-axis refers to net LUCC relative to the wind cluster area (%). Each circle corresponds to one wind cluster and its color refers to the federal state where the cluster is located. Positive values indicate native vegetation regrowth. Assessing the cost of a herd immunity approach to COVID-19 in the USA AMER I C AS The pursuit of wind power expansion in Brazil Michael Kuhn: kuhn@iiasa.ac.at Aline Soterroni: soterr@iiasa.ac.at Further info: pure.iiasa.ac.at/17230 Further info: pure.iiasa.ac.at/16989 By Jeremy Summers By Neema Tavakolian Regional impacts 21Optionswww.iiasa.ac.at Winter 2021