Renewable-energy sources often are regarded as dispersed and difficult to collect, thus requiring substantial land resources in comparison to conventional energy sources. In this review, we present the normali. The potential role of renewable-energy sources, such as solar electric and wind power,. 2.1. CoalThe coal-fuel cycle affects the pattern of land use both directly and indirectly during the stages of mining, beneficiation, and electricity-genera. The land occupation metric involves the duration over which the area of the transformed land returns to its original state, typically measured as a product of land area (m2) a. This analysis does not include the secondary effects associated with land exploitation for some fuel cycles that are difficult to quantify. For example, surface mining gradually. Our study reviews and updates the land-transformation metric for conventional- and renewable-fuel cycles for generating electricity. We show that the PV life cycle of power plants in t. 1.L. Gagnon, C. Bélanger, Y. UchiyamaLife-cycle assessment of electricity generation options: the status of research in year 2001.