A major challenge for anyone trying to tackle climate change is finding solutions that don’t create new problems. For example, climate scientists agree that the world needs more solar panels, wind turbines and transmission lines. But building all that infrastructure takes up a lot of landand that land can be a critical habitat for endangered animals, teeming with wildflowers and birds and insects, or a great place for indigenous people to forage for traditional food.
According to a recent study in the journal Nature Communications, areas around the world well-suited for wind, solar and other forms of clean energy overlap with about 10 percent of the land important for biodiversity and other human needs such as clean water and wood for fuel. The United States alone would need tens of millions of acres of sunny plateaus for solar arrays and windy ridges for wind turbines to stop burning oil, gas and coal. The potential for conflict between conservation and the development of renewable energy is even greater than it is between conservation and farming, mining or drilling for fossil fuels, the study found.
This finding was the “biggest surprise” for Rachel Neugarten, a researcher at Cornell University and one of the paper’s authors. “Renewable energy is absolutely essential to climate goals,” she said. “However, if it is located in the wrong places, it can have negative impacts.”
Neugarten’s team mapped the entire world for biodiversity, pressure from farming, mining and other forms of development, and 10 of “nature’s contributions to humans” – from crop pollination to recreation. The researchers found that only 18 percent of the land needed by humans is currently protected from urban sprawl and resource extraction, more than one-third of which is highly suitable for agriculture, mining, oil and gas drilling, or clean energy projects. In Ireland, for example, 60 percent of the land is well suited for renewable energy, agriculture or mining, while it is also important for grazing, storage of nutrients such as nitrogen and recreation, the authors wrote.
“One of the key takeaways from this study is that it is possible to achieve conservation, climate and development goals, but that it will require careful planning,” Neugarten said. “We need to think carefully about how decisions in one sector, such as the development of renewable energy, can undermine goals in other sectors, such as habitat for pollinators or biodiversity conservation.”
The authors suggest that a way around this problem would be to build wind or solar farms on land that has already been cleared or degraded. This could mean installing solar panels on abandoned industrial sites or higher parking areas, Neugarten said. But she also recommended linking renewable energy with agriculture. As two examples she showed an 18 hectare sunshade in Minnesota, nestled among pollinator-friendly flowers and beehives, capable of powering more than 100,000 homes, as well as a wind farm on a cattle farm in Arizona.
The paper does not address whether there is actually enough land to fit all the solar and wind farms the world needs without threatening biodiversity and causing other ecological damage. That’s still an open question, Neugarten said. The United States would need a piece of land about the size of five South Dakotas to generate enough clean power to operate a carbon-free economy by 2050, according to a analysis by Bloomberg News and Princeton University. And you can’t just stick wind turbines and solar panels everywhere: A solar farm needs to be on flat, sunny terrain, close enough to the electrical grid to keep transmission costs from skyrocketing.
Still, some research indicate that there need not be a dramatic trade-off between conservation and clean energy. The Nature Conservancy, which helped fund Neugarten’s study, has a report last year shows that the US can deploy a lot of wind and solar power without significant damage to the environment. The report outlined three courses of action: combining solar and wind on the same land, installing solar panels on agricultural land, and using solar panels that tilt to absorb more sunlight and produce more energy.
Where and how renewable energy projects are built affects biodiversity more than the amount of clean energy produced worldwide, according to Ryan McManamay, an ecologist at Baylor University who was not involved in Neugarten’s study. “It is quite possible to meet more needs of the population and have a lower impact on biodiversity, based on thoughtful considerations of how things are developed,” he said.
Scientists also say the environmental consequences of building lots of wind turbines and solar panels are unlikely to be as bad as continuing to burn large amounts of fossil fuels. Climate change itself poses a major risk to biodiversity.
“There has been some rhetoric about green versus green, setting renewable energy at odds with biodiversity conservation,” Neugarten said. “I really think it’s doable to do both if we put our minds to it.”
