The Intersection Between Renewable Energy and Conservation

Resolving the negative impacts of the climate crisis requires a big-picture look at every industry’s responsibilities and opportunities for improvement. Every sector uses energy and resources, which impacts biodiversity and habitats.

Disparate industries will eventually realise their impacts and priorities are the same, no matter how removed fashion is from construction or cybersecurity is from food service. After distilling green priorities from the world’s industries, you will find an intersection between renewable energy and conservation that is inextricably linked.

How Renewables Relate to Conservation

Land use is the most apparent crossover between these fields. Renewable energy uses considerable acreage, potentially interacting with natural habitats or disrupting wildlife activity. Scoping efforts could be more conscientious. However, renewable energy niches are catching word of their reputation and attempting to change it. For example, solar farm installations can be pollinator friendly in a way that promotes natural processes and biodiversity, though it is not always successful.

With a macro lens, renewable energy is essential for conservation because it mitigates the progression of extreme temperatures and unpredictable natural weather events. Rising temperatures put countless species at risk for endangerment and ice caps threaten arctic wildlife. Humans see press like this as species swiftly migrate or rapidly adopt never-before-seen diseases.

Worldwide renewable energy adoption is a long-term, gradual influence on conservation by acknowledging how slowly creatures adapt to environmental stressors. These are the most prominent impacts renewable energy has on biodiversity to direct how companies and governments can respond:

• Direct: Predictable and preventable influences from renewable energy projects based on knowledge from the project and the location’s biodiversity, like species disruption because the environment gets fragmented.
• Indirect: Impacts from renewable energy or construction byproducts. For example, if a geothermal energy plant brings an increased population to an area, it could change wildlife behaviours to move into foreign environments and spread invasive species.
• Cumulative: The combined impacts of continued renewable energy project interactivity, human influence, and future project development.

What Inaccurate Press Does to Renewable Energy

Everyone has heard news stories about how wind turbines eliminate swaths of birds and bats, and hydropower infrastructure harms whales and fish. All the while, these stories glaze over how much fossil fuels put animals in jeopardy.

The biased portrayal prevents progress from thoughtful, open-minded renewable energy R&D that could end up helping biodiversity instead of harming it. These reports assume renewable energy will take up as much space as possible, but this is an oversimplification. It is another way conservation and renewable energy are linked — how they synergise through media, and how humans can improve upon it to make it more honest and proactive.

New technologies are helping surveyors and energy professionals determine where they should and should not build based on data that shows how it would endanger species. It could also consider demographics and cultural data from surrounding areas to see how affecting biodiversity could threaten groups of people for a more tangible, relatable impact.

For example, installing renewable energy sources in an area could move species from one place to another. Movement could incentivise companies to pursue more deforestation when it was previously impossible because of biodiversity.

How to Bridge the Gaps

There are ways to combine renewable energy management and wildlife and habitat conservation. Grid modernisation and utility development are necessary — so is protecting biodiversity. So, humans must invent solutions. Otherwise, renewable energy efforts to reduce climate change will be moot.

Here are some influential ways land management can consider biodiversity while expanding renewable energy access:

• Households adopting renewable energy can certify their yards as Certified Wildlife Habitats
• Skyscrapers can incorporate rooftop gardens or trellises for greenery.
• Innovators can focus on vertical-axis wind turbines — like Savonius or bladeless turbines — which are shorter and require less land.
• Scientists can use technology to create digital simulations about how mass renewable energy installs would change environments and animals, like solar arrays in the desert.

Recognising the Overlaps of Renewables and Conservation

These two fields of environmentalism intersect in almost every aspect. Every renewable energy development, project or installation will impact conservation efforts, which trickles into affecting communities.

Acknowledging these connections is crucial because renewable energy adoption is happening expeditiously. This speed requires those in the workforce to adjust operations accordingly and citizens to advocate for more thoughtful procedures.