CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS

Context

For our power lines mission, we wanted to find out just how much potential rewilding could theoretically be done along power lines in Europe. So we set out to calculate a ballpark figure for the amount of land (in Hectares) that has been deforested underneath Europe’s power lines, and could potentially be given back to nature following Pro Natura’s example.

Step 1: Total Length of Power Lines in Europe

Using this dataset, we are able to know the total length of high-voltage power lines for each European country. Combined, this number is 543,874.84km.

Step 2: Power Lines Through Forests

Next, we apply the percentage of forest areas per country (the average for Europe is 39%). However, power lines are not evenly distributed to forest and non-forest areas. They are more likely to be found close to densely populated/industrial areas and less frequent in rural areas. So we used a factor of 0.5 to take care of this assumption.

Essentially, we took the total length of each country’s power lines, and applied the percentage of forest areas in that country. This gives us the length of power lines that could run through forests in each country, and we halved that.

The estimated total length of high voltage power lines running through Europe’s forests: 95,820km.

Step 3: Deforested Ground Below Power Lines

For our final step, we needed to find out how wide the deforested area underneath power lines is. Well, this can vary not only from country to country, but also within countries. The range is 20-100m.

For power lines with a voltage of 400-380kV, we assumed an average width of 70m. For 220-150kV power lines we assumed a width of 50m. And for 132-50kV power lines, we assumed a width of 30m.

Altogether, our estimate of deforested land underneath power lines in Europe is:

4,867km2

or

486,700 Hectares