Synergies and trade‐offs between renewable energy expansion and biodiversity conservation – a cross‐national multifactor analysis

Andrea Santangeli,Mark Pogson,Pete Smith,Tuuli Toivonen,Enrico Di Minin,Atte Moilanen,Astley Hastings

doi:10.1111/gcbb.12337

Abstract

AbstractIncreased deployment of renewable energy can contribute towards mitigating climate change and improving air quality, wealth and development. However, renewable energy technologies are not free of environmental impacts; thus, it is important to identify opportunities and potential threats from the expansion of renewable energy deployment. Currently, there is no cross‐national comprehensive analysis linking renewable energy potential simultaneously to socio‐economic and political factors and biodiversity priority locations. Here, we quantify the relationship between the fraction of land‐based renewable energy (including solar photovoltaic, wind and bioenergy) potential available outside the top biodiversity areas (i.e. outside the highest ranked 30% priority areas for biodiversity conservation) within each country, with selected socio‐economic and geopolitical factors as well as biodiversity assets. We do so for two scenarios that identify priority areas for biodiversity conservation alternatively in a globally coordinated manner vs. separately for individual countries. We show that very different opportunities and challenges emerge if the priority areas for biodiversity protection are identified globally or designated nationally. In the former scenario, potential for solar, wind and bioenergy outside the top biodiversity areas is highest in developing countries, in sparsely populated countries and in countries of low biodiversity potential but with high air pollution mortality. Conversely, when priority areas for biodiversity protection are designated nationally, renewable energy potential outside the top biodiversity areas is highest in countries with good governance but also in countries with high biodiversity potential and population density. Overall, these results identify both clear opportunities but also risks that should be considered carefully when making decisions about renewable energy policies.

Highlights

There is overwhelming evidence that fossil fuels are the main driver of climate change (IPCC, 2013)
Because there are two commonly recognized alternative means to identify priority areas for conservation, we explored the outcomes of using these two alternatives by considering two scenarios: one where priorities for biodiversity conservation have been identified globally without administrative considerations and the other where priorities are identified for each country separately
We excluded all countries for which the overall national potential was equal to zero for the particular RE considered (i.e. N = 78 countries for solar, 92 for bioenergy and 65 for wind under the global protection scenario, and N = 86, 100 and 81, respectively, for the national protection scenario) as they have no relevance for this study that focuses on factors related to RE development and biodiversity conservation

Summary

Introduction

There is overwhelming evidence that fossil fuels are the main driver of climate change (IPCC, 2013). Our emphasis is in identifying factors that may represent major risks and opportunities to human societies and the environment from the development of RE, accounting for the different impacts on land use and biodiversity expected from the expansion of solar, wind and bioenergy (Fargione et al, 2008, 2010; Northrup & Wittemyer, 2013; Pogson et al, 2013). There is a pressing need to implement globally coordinated efforts for effective expansion of the PA network (Di Minin & Toivonen, 2015), what is happening in practice is that each country is identifying national areas for PA expansion independently This implementation pathway is supported by the CBD (Aichi Targets set by the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010).

Materials and methods

Results

Discussion