Assessing potential spatial trade-offs between renewable energy expansion and biodiversity conservation

Abstract

Energy systems need decarbonisation in order to limit global warming to within safe limits. Unfettered climate change has the potential to greatly exacerbate species extinctions already much higher than historic baselines. Renewable energy technologies, especially solar photovoltaic and wind, have the potential to greatly aid in this decarbonisation but there are concerns as to the land required when compared to conventional, energy-dense, fuels. This is especially true given the urgent need to demarcate more land for biodiversity conservation. However, attempts to evidence these land concerns are hindered by lack of quality spatial data. This thesis shows, using newly generated spatially explicit data, that the expansion of renewable energy and biodiversity conservation do not necessarily conflict. I find, using a novel global, open access, harmonised dataset of onshore wind and solar photovoltaic installations, that although there are currently numerous overlaps with areas of conservation importance worldwide, echoing previous studies, when historic distributions are taken into account there is no evidence that energy-biodiversity conflict is set to increase in the future. I also find that although priority areas for biodiversity conservation have been identified well in prior work, identification of priority areas for renewable energy needs improvement. The results presented here suggest that more thoughtful planning of renewable energy can ensure no more potential impact on biodiversity than expected under a business as usual development scenario. I anticipate the data will support more research into what drives renewable energy siting, as well as providing a potential avenue for civil society to assess governmental progress towards clean energy objectives, for example Target 7.1 and 7.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals. Furthermore, the methods here provide a framework into which local impacts of renewable energy on biodiversity can be incorporated when they are better known.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Sebastian Lionel Dunnett: orcid.org/0000-0002-4238-2508

ORCID for Felix Eigenbrod: orcid.org/0000-0001-8982-824X

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