New Study: What Do Solar and Wind Experts Think About Renewable Projects’ Risk To Biodiversity?
A Nationwide poll
Studies have highlighted the public’s concern about renewable energy projects’ threat to biodiversity.
But what do the experts think?
A paper recently published by the Wild Energy Center fills a gap in the research.
Renewable energy development can stir up strong opinions among members of the public. Besides the promise of clean energy, bird fatalities, declining desert tortoises, and razed native habitats loom in people’s minds. Public concern about this new infrastructure’s threat to biodiversity has even been confirmed by several studies.
“There are often valid concerns from the public about the impact of wind turbines on birds and bats,” says Daphne Condon, a Ph.D. candidate in Energy Systems and a member of the UC Davis Wild Energy Center.
Daphne Condon’s new paper from the Wild Energy Center collected expert opinions on renewable energy and biodiversity.
But Condon wondered, do the perceived risks of renewable development to biodiversity depend on who you ask and where they live? While many researchers have polled the general public, few have specifically asked the experts making decisions that actively determine the fate of new renewable energy projects.
A paper recently published by the Wild Energy Center, led by Condon, tackles that question. Her team surveyed academics, policymakers, and non-profit staff to understand how practitioners may influence the rollout of large-scale solar and wind energy generation nationwide.
Condon polled respondents from all fifty states to gather baseline impressions from a geographically diverse sample. She expected their outlook to mirror that of the general public.
“It surprised me. I thought it was going to be 100% negative,” Condon said. “But actually, people were pretty open to renewable energy just from the biodiversity lens.”
Respondents in the Midwest showed a majority neutral opinion on solar developments’ impact on plants and animals.
While many regions did show a negative perception, the majority of Midwest respondents had a neutral outlook on solar’s impact on biodiversity. Condon’s team conducted interviews in the region to dig into that result.
“ We're hypothesizing this could come from a recent rise in planting pollinator habitat underneath solar panels and increasing biodiversity space,” Condon says. “Some respondents were aware this multi-use type of development is going on. That’s an avenue we noted for further exploration.”
When it came to asking respondents about the impacts of wind energy, Condon’s suspicions were confirmed. Overwhelmingly, respondents labeled wind as harmful to animals—potentially with bird and bat impacts in mind.
In addition to gauging people’s feelings about renewable energy’s impact on biodiversity, the paper put the growing sector into context by asking respondents to compare it with other—sometimes competing—drivers of land-use change, like agriculture, fossil fuel extraction, and urban growth. Overall, renewable energy was perceived as having a lesser impact on biodiversity than those land uses.
Notably, respondents in the Pacific Coast region were an exception. They predicted renewable energy projects’ impact on biodiversity would be equally bad as fossil fuel developments over the next 25 years.
Condon is hopeful that developers and lawmakers take lessons learned from their region and adapt policies accordingly.
“Maybe it’s a siting question. Maybe it’s a design question,” Condon says, “ Hopefully we can find ways to have a conversation about the consequences for local biodiversity if we are to make progress on sustainable development.”