Golf courses and renewable energy: a land use exploration

I am not a golfer. And before I start, I want to say that the authors of the paper I’m talking about are not saying that they think all the golf courses in the world should be converted to renewable energy sites. But, they are raising questions about land use decisions and who benefits.

Weinand and colleagues (2025) analyzed the area covered by golf courses in the world. They found 38,427 golf courses with the US and UK having the most. There is some error with this that underestimates the global total, but it gives a good estimate. In Canada, there is approximately 16 times more land allocated to golf courses compared to that for solar energy. The US has about 6 times more land for golf courses. China is a bit of an outlier with a large currently installed capacity for renewable energy, therefore the following excludes China.

So, the next question is how much power could that land generate if it was switched to renewable energy production? Excluding China, installing solar on 25% to 75% of golf courses would generate 281 to 842 GW of energy. Even at 25% this would be greater than the current installed potential (excluding China). The capacity forecasts up to 2028 would be met by 50% coverage. It should be noted, that while this applies worldwide, Germany, France, and South Korea do not have enough golf courses to support their own projected increases.

Part of the authors argument in this analysis is looking at how many people benefit. Golf courses are restricted to a few people who benefit in the global scale. Whereas, increasing renewable energy production has the potential to benefit not just local populations but global human and non-human populations through climate change mitigation. Therefore, while they are not saying that we need to get rid of all golf courses, they are raising the point that we need to consider our priorities for land use. They also point out that for the US to reach 100% clean energy by 2025, they would need to transition 4.7 times more land than is currently used for golf courses. However, the total area needed is significantly less than that currently allocated for active oil and gas production (38,000 km2 compared to 105,000 km2).

Years ago, I made a video where I talked about priorities for oil: do we want personal vehicles for every trip or do we want sterile medical plastics? I feel like this is asking a very similar question: what are our priorities for land?