Abstract
Renewable energy deployment has accelerated exponentially, taking up a growing area of land at a time of increasing land use pressure and environmental degradation. Land use change for renewable energy can have positive and negative environmental consequences, but robustly quantifying the effects is challenging. Here, we evaluate the monetary benefits of pollination services from installing honeybee hives in solar parks and discuss how they could inform policy and practice. If honeybee hives were installed in all existing solar parks within England, we estimate that the pollination service benefits for pollinator dependent field crops, top fruits and soft fruit would have been £5.9 million in 2017. This is grounded in honeybee pollination crop values of £4.81–£75.04 ha−1 for field crops and £635–£10,644 ha−1 for fruit. However, given the greater field crop land areas the total associated economic benefits were greater than for fruit. Honeybee pollination service benefits could theoretically be as high as £80 million per year if the spatial distribution of crops was altered. However, the viability of this is uncertain given other factors that influence crop location and the potential trade-offs with wild pollinators. We outline how honeybee pollination service benefits could contribute to solar park business cases, inform the planning process, and be used as environmental sustainability indicators by industry. Such energy-economic-ecosystem wins demonstrate the potential of incorporating environmental co-benefits into energy decarbonisation policies and a means of addressing the land-energy-ecosystem nexus.
Highlights
As climate change progresses, increasing emphasis in policy, practice and research arenas is being placed on the importance of the environ ment and mitigating its degradation (Allen and et al, 2018; Figueres et al, 2017; IPBES, 2019)
If honeybee hives were installed in all existing solar parks within England, we estimate that the pollination service benefits for pollinator dependent field crops, top fruits and soft fruit would have been £5.9 million in 2017
This paper aims to establish the economic pollination service benefit of managing solar parks for honeybees and how the practice could be embedded into solar park decisions
Summary
As climate change progresses, increasing emphasis in policy, practice and research arenas is being placed on the importance of the environ ment and mitigating its degradation (Allen and et al, 2018; Figueres et al, 2017; IPBES, 2019). Within the renewable energy sector this has resulted in environment-focussed best practice guidance, for example within SolarPower Europe's Operation & Maintenance Best Practice Guidelines (SolarPower Europe, 2019). There is increasing emphasis on company social, environment and governance targets, partly in response to growing public awareness. There has been a growth in sustainable mutual funds demonstrating demand for environmentally astute renewable energy investment opportunities (Busch et al, 2016). The challenge of quantifying environmental impacts often prevents their widespread and robust inclusion in decision making (Boerema et al, 2017; Dicks et al, 2014)
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