Energy and Wildlife Conservation: A Two-Pronged Approach

by Alix Underwood

At the 2024 conference of The Wildlife Society (TWS)  in Baltimore, I was struck by the prevalence of one topic: low-carbon energy development. There were eight sessions with “renewable energy,” “solar,” or “wind” in their titles, and issues related to these energy sources permeated many other sessions. At a policy priorities meeting, low-carbon energy dominated the discussion, with professionals and academics from across the country sharing their unique concerns. According to Joseph Roy, a wildlife biologist from Maine with experience in the public and private sectors,

“We need to strike a balance between wildlife needs and renewable energy needs. Oftentimes the areas targeted for energy development are open landscapes and grassland communities. Since we have so few of these communities in Maine, our species that rely on them are very limited and often of greatest conservation need. Proper siting is critical to mitigate impacts on habitats while addressing important renewable energy needs.”

Proper siting. This was the resounding call of the wildlife professionals at the conference: Don’t put solar and wind farms on land that threatened species and ecosystems depend on. The popular sentiment was that education and collaboration could mitigate bad siting. Corporations and local policymakers should be educated on best siting and permitting practices, and both parties should consult wildlife professionals earlier and more often.

However, despite the faith in proper siting, there was an undercurrent of apprehension about the scale of development and the lack of data to quantify its impacts. In one session, a researcher asked a panelist from Deriva Energy why the company’s data wasn’t available to academics, frustration creeping into her voice. The panelist responded frankly that journalists and advocacy groups would weaponize it. The data didn’t paint a pretty picture, notwithstanding climate-change mitigation efforts.

How does fossil-fueled climate change impact wildlife, and how do these impacts compare to those of low-carbon energy? Rigorous comparisons are lacking. Establishing a “counterfactual”—a scenario in which the low-carbon energy facility had never been developed—is a complex undertaking. The consensus is that fossil fuels are worse, but low-carbon energy impacts are far from negligible. Halting the sixth mass extinction will require a two-pronged approach: transitioning to low-carbon energy and reducing energy consumption.

Wildlife Struggles to Adapt to a Changing Climate

The ten warmest years in the historical record were 2014–2023, and 2023 almost breached the agreed-upon boundary of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial baseline. For the same reasons this doesn’t bode well for humans, it doesn’t bode well for wildlife. Rising temperatures impact the food supply and reproduction of many species, and invasive species often fare better than native ones. For example, the invasive brown trout, which does better in warmer water, is outcompeting the native brook trout in the eastern United States.

Weather-related natural disasters, which increased five-fold from 1970–2019, also impact wildlife. Floods can lead to severe water pollution, eroded soil, and drowned tree roots, degrading ecosystems that wildlife depends on. Wildfires can also be devastating: Australia’s 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires are estimated to have killed or displaced three billion animals.

Experts estimate that climate change has already increased the extinction likelihood of almost 11,000 species on the Red List of Threatened Species. In a study looking forward to 2100, researchers estimated that the number of species exposed to dangerously high temperatures will double, from fifteen to thirty percent. They warn that we are approaching a critical tipping point.

The climate has undergone massive changes before, but this time around is unique. Researchers estimate that recent global warming is happening an order of magnitude faster than the warming that straddled the Paleocene and Eocene epochs. During that period, 56 million years ago, biodiversity increased. This is likely because organisms were able to migrate large distances, unimpeded. Today’s wildlife doesn’t enjoy this luxury. In addition to habitat loss and fragmentation, species must contend with a long list of anthropogenic pressures, including pollution and overexploitation. Let’s add low-carbon energy development to the list.

Low-Carbon Energy and Wildlife Conservation

Low-carbon energy technologies are just one set of tools for combatting climate change. Yet, because they align with the dominant green growth narrative, wildlife organizations prioritize them above other mitigation methods. These technologies can drastically decrease greenhouse gas emissions per kilowatt-hour, but their buildout and maintenance require minerals, land, water, and, as it stands, fossil fuels. In other words, they are embedded in the trophic structure of the economy and cannot be absolutely decoupled from environmental impact. Indeed, biologists have been documenting the effects of low-carbon energy development on wildlife for decades.

Hydropower

Hydropower supplied seventeen percent of global electricity generation in 2020. As of 2017, there were over 58 thousand dams large enough to impound more than three million cubic meters of water. Arguably the low-carbon energy most infamous for its wildlife impacts, hydropower severely alters aquatic ecosystems and watersheds. Reservoir creation floods large areas of land, destroying terrestrial habitats. Species that rely on tropical lowland habitats, such as jaguars and tigers, have been especially impacted.

Dams disrupt river connectivity, blocking the migration routes and reproduction patterns of anadromous species like salmon and freshwater species like sturgeon. They also alter water conditions, such as temperature, oxygen, and sediment levels.

Another cause for concern is that dam construction and operation go hand-in-hand with the development of roads and other infrastructure in previously remote areas. This drives an overall increase in human activity, including deforestation and poaching.

Wind

Wind accounted for almost eight percent of global electricity generation in 2023. By my rough calculations—using global wind energy capacity, average turbine capacity, and estimates of the share of onshore versus off-shore turbines—the world has about 300,000 wind turbines.

Turbine collisions directly affect birds and bats. Bats are also susceptible to internal injuries and death by “barotrauma,” which is caused by sudden pressure changes from turbine blades. Researchers estimated 2012 bird fatalities at around 600,000 and bat fatalities at around 900,000 in the United States. Annual bird fatalities are now likely in the one-million range.

Wind farms also affect wildlife less directly by reducing or fragmenting habitats. Though the land below and around turbines appears largely untouched, many species avoid these areas due to noise, movement, and human activity. Offshore wind farms also impact wildlife, for example by disrupting the communication and migration patterns of marine mammals, such as whales and dolphins.

It is worth mentioning that wind development (any energy development) can also negatively affect human communities. In Lincoln County, Oklahoma, for example, the impacts of rampant wind development are turning citizens against Big Wind.

Solar

Solar photovoltaic is the third most prevalent low-carbon energy source. In 2023, solar accounted for 5.4 percent of global electricity. Though small-scale, strategically sited solar infrastructure is less harmful to wildlife than hydropower and wind facilities, most development to date has been utility-scale. Large solar farms degrade and fragment natural habitats. Wildlife, especially birds and bats, may mistake reflective panels for water bodies, which sometimes results in collisions and fatalities.

Solar farms can also attract certain insects and repel others, altering ecosystem dynamics. A study of Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert revealed that the quantity and diversity of pollinators at the solar farm were significantly lower than at control sites.

The Mojave Desert is home to a slew of utility-scale facilities, the installation of which often entails complete vegetation removal. The desert is also home to a wealth of species—not just pollinators—many of which are imperiled. Solar development has particularly affected the threatened desert tortoise.

An Uphill Energy Battle

Researchers have observed the impacts identified here at the levels of low-carbon energy development to date. Yet we have a long way to go, and we need to get there fast for effective climate protection. The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimates that a full transition to zero-carbon electricity would require increasing wind and solar to between 60 and 75 percent of the U.S. electricity mix (they stood at fourteen percent in 2022). To reach that goal by 2035, we’d need to more than quadruple annual deployment rates for both technologies. This would have to be accompanied by the construction of thousands of miles of high-capacity transmission lines per year.

These numbers are daunting, but NREL paints a rosy land-use change picture. They estimate the necessary buildout would require less than half the land occupied by active oil and gas leases. However, these estimates only account for land directly occupied by infrastructure, which makes up two percent of the land within a wind farm, for example. That may be good news for other human activities (for example, agriculture), but not necessarily for wildlife. Ideally, we would install new low-carbon energy facilities in lands already scarred extensively by economic activity. However, as wildlife professionals at the TWS conference expressed, that often does not happen.

Competing and interconnected demands—agriculture, housing, infrastructure, etc.—make win-win siting difficult, especially as energy demand continues to grow. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that global primary energy, meaning all forms of energy consumption (not just electricity), will increase by between 16% and 57% from 2022 to 2050. Population growth, more economic activity, and higher living standards drive this increase. In all but their “Low Economic Growth” scenario, EIA projects that growth in energy consumption will result in more CO2 emissions than efficiency advances save.

A Second Prong for the Conservation Approach

If we truly want to protect wildlife—and ourselves—from climate change, we need to transition to low-carbon energy sources and consume less energy. The best way to achieve this is degrowth toward a sustainable, steady state economy. However, many conservation groups are married to the green growth paradigm and find it difficult to imagine a lower-consumption future.

TWS is one of the few scientific, professional societies that officially acknowledges the fundamental conflict between economic growth and wildlife conservation. Congruent with this, its position statement on Energy Development and Wildlife concedes that “all forms of energy development can affect wildlife and wildlife habitat.” Yet rather than calling for a decrease in energy consumption—in addition to a transition to low-carbon energy—TWS simply accepts that “worldwide energy demands will continue to increase.”

TWS’s energy development policy recommendations focus exclusively on proper siting, monitoring, and evaluation. They are not unique. “Big Green” environmental organizations like Defenders of Wildlife advocate for policies to make renewable energy “wildlife friendly.” The National Wildlife Federation has developed a Clean Energy Transmission Policy Platform, with no mention of overall consumption decreases.

Consuming Less for Our Fellow Beings

Some environmental organizations, such as the National Wildlife Federation, do encourage individuals to conserve energy. Individual behavior change can indeed go a long way. A short list of examples would include: 1) avoiding status-driven or unnecessary items that require high energy inputs during production and use; 2) opting for walking, cycling, or public transport instead of driving or flying (or simply traveling less); and 3) shifting to a plant-based diet sourced locally when feasible, as animal and industrial agriculture are energy-intensive.

We also need policies to incentivize behavior change and to reform systems and institutions that perpetuate energy-intensive lifestyles. The current U.S. administration may not be amenable to such policies, but we can advocate for them at other levels of governance. They include:

• Caps on energy use for non-essential production
• Taxation and carbon-pricing mechanisms
• Provision of universal basic services, such as transportation and healthcare, to de-commodify them and reduce the need for private, energy-intensive alternatives
• Encouragement of decentralized, community-controlled energy systems that prioritize sufficiency over profit

Any organization fighting climate change should advocate for consumption-reducing behaviors and policies. However, the development of this “second prong” is particularly relevant for wildlife conservation, given the known impacts of the first prong, low-carbon energy, on nonhuman species. To secure a livable Earth for all, we must alter our economic priorities.

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Alix Underwood is managing editor at CASSE.