A renewable energy transition that doesn’t harm nature? It’s not just possible, it’s essential

Earth is going through a human-driven local weather disaster, which calls for a speedy transition to low-carbon power sources similar to wind and solar energy. However we’re additionally residing via a mass extinction event. By no means earlier than in human historical past have there been such excessive such charges of species loss and ecosystem collapse.

The biodiversity disaster isn’t just distressing, it is a main menace to the worldwide financial system. Greater than half of worldwide Gross Home Product (GDP) straight is dependent upon nature. The World Financial Discussion board charges biodiversity loss within the high risks to the global economy over the subsequent decade, after local weather change and pure disasters.

Human-driven local weather change damages nature—and lack of nature exacerbates climate change. So if humanity’s efforts to mitigate local weather change find yourself damaging nature, we shoot ourselves within the foot.

Australia, nonetheless, should resist an uncomfortable fact: we’re placing renewable energy projects in locations that injury the species and ecosystems on which we rely.

Renewables on the run

Renewable power tasks are being developed that damage nature and culturally significant sites. Others are resented by communities, or fail at regulatory hurdles.

Environmentally damaging tasks put one other nail within the coffin of species and ecosystems already underneath immense stress. Even people who have an effect on a comparatively small space contribute to nature’s “death by a thousand cuts“.

Take, for instance, the proposed Euston wind farm in southwest New South Wales. It could entail 96 turbines built near the Willandra Lakes World Heritage space, doubtlessly affecting threatened birds.

And in North Queensland, the Upper Burdekin wind farm proposal will take away 769 hectares of endangered species habitat relied on by Sharman’s wallabies, koalas and northern higher gliders. The cleared space could be nearly 200 instances greater than the Melbourne Cricket Floor.

The easy overlay under, which we ready, illustrates the issue in Queensland. The evaluation, a part of a analysis challenge funded by Boundless Earth, exhibits in stark element the crossover between power tasks, transmission traces and nationally listed threatened species habitats and ecosystems.

The ‘fast-track’ may also be the nice observe

Of their comprehensible haste to get extra clear power tasks constructed, state and federal governments are promising to “streamline” approvals processes. Quick-tracked approvals will solely present web social profit if they’re primarily based on good knowledge, sound evaluation and real group engagement.

Two successive evaluations of our nationwide environmental legal guidelines, most lately by Graeme Samuelrecognized what’s wanted to enhance the effectivity of improvement approvals and get higher outcomes for nature. The reply? Good planning on the regional scale, underpinned by good knowledge.

At a minimal, we have to know the places of threatened or culturally vital species and locations, high-value agriculture and invaluable pure areas. A proposed new federal physique, Environmental Data Australia, would search to centralize current biodiversity knowledge. However considerably extra knowledge are required to fill essential information gaps.

Good planning can create shared function and convey optimistic environmental and social outcomes, together with certainty to builders and conservationists. In Queensland, the Nice Barrier Reef Marine Park has loved sturdy planning help primarily based on good knowledge and excessive group participation for greater than 30 years, with some conservation success.

In distinction, poor planning polarizes stakeholders and communities. It erodes trust between stakeholders, builders and authorities by lowering the integrity and high quality of planning selections. This results in ongoing battle over land use, as has been noticed in Queensland.

A proposal to construct a renewable power microgrid in Queensland’s Daintree rainforest is a living proof. It’s inflicting ache for native communities, pitting renewable power advocates in opposition to conservation organizations.

When tasks fail to achieve group help and crucial approvals, the proponent’s cash is wasted, and we lose treasured time within the pressing transition to renewables.

Renewables tasks ought to improve nature

It is stunning and disappointing how few proponents of Australian renewables tasks actively search to reinforce the habitat values of the land their tasks occupy.

Partly, it’s because planning rules are nonetheless firmly centered on avoiding impacts to nature, and offsetting injury when it happens.

As a substitute, we want insurance policies and legal guidelines that compel nature-positive approaches that regenerate biodiversity.

In California, for instance, a test project to develop native crops underneath photo voltaic panels is restoring prairie land and pollinator habitat on the web site of a decommissioned nuclear energy station. In Australia, there are occasional signs we could transfer in an analogous route.

It is not exhausting to envisage a renewables rollout that prioritizes tasks on degraded, ex-agricultural land, avoiding injury to important habitats and benefiting nature. Wind generators needs to be constructed away from pure vegetation and migratory routes for birds and bats.

Our mapping for potential wind and photo voltaic tasks in southern Queensland exhibits sturdy potential west of the Nice Dividing Vary for power technology with out the identical degree of land-use battle with pure values and productive agriculture.

A significant problem to power challenge improvement in Queensland, as in another elements of Australia, is an absence of transmission infrastructure, or “poles and wires”, within the locations the place renewable power and nature may most fortunately coexist. This infrastructure ought to urgently be developed in a approach that doesn’t influence pure vegetation and species habitats.

Quickly reaching web zero will not be negotiable to avoiding the worst ravages of local weather change. However doing so in a approach that damages nature is self-defeating. We’ve got the planning instruments and knowledge wanted to create a nature-positive local weather transition. Now we want sufficient state and Commonwealth authorities funding, management and political will.

This text is republished from The Conversation underneath a Inventive Commons license. Learn the original article.