Earth is dealing with a human-driven local weather disaster, which calls for a speedy transition to low-carbon power sources equivalent to wind and solar energy. However we’re additionally residing by a mass extinction occasion. 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 is not only distressing, it is a main menace to the worldwide economic system. Greater than half of world Gross Home Product (GDP) instantly will depend on nature. The World Financial Discussion board charges biodiversity loss within the prime dangers to the worldwide economic system over the following decade, after local weather change and pure disasters.
Human-driven local weather change damages nature—and lack of nature exacerbates local weather change. So if humanity’s efforts to mitigate local weather change find yourself damaging nature, we shoot ourselves within the foot.
Australia, nonetheless, should withstand an uncomfortable fact: we’re placing renewable power tasks in locations that injury the species and ecosystems on which we rely.
Renewables on the run
Renewable power tasks are being developed that injury nature and culturally important websites. 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 beneath immense strain. Even those 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 will entail 96 generators constructed close to the Willandra Lakes World Heritage space, doubtlessly affecting threatened birds.
And in North Queensland, the Higher 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 can be nearly 200 occasions larger than the Melbourne Cricket Floor.
The straightforward overlay beneath, which we ready, illustrates the issue in Queensland. The evaluation, a part of a analysis undertaking funded by Boundless Earth, reveals 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 great 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 internet social profit if they’re based mostly on good information, sound evaluation and real group engagement.
Two successive opinions of our nationwide environmental legal guidelines, most just lately by Graeme Samuel, recognized what’s wanted to enhance the effectivity of growth approvals and get higher outcomes for nature. The reply? Good planning on the regional scale, underpinned by good information.
At a minimal, we have to know the areas of threatened or culturally important species and locations, high-value agriculture and useful pure areas. A proposed new federal physique, Environmental Info Australia, would search to centralize current biodiversity information. However considerably extra information are required to fill necessary information gaps.
Good planning can create shared objective 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 assist based mostly on good information and excessive group participation for greater than 30 years, with some conservation success.
In distinction, poor planning polarizes stakeholders and communities. It erodes belief between stakeholders, builders and authorities by lowering the integrity and high quality of planning choices. 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 working example. It’s inflicting ache for native communities, pitting renewable power advocates towards conservation organizations.
When tasks fail to achieve group assist and crucial approvals, the proponent’s cash is wasted, and we lose valuable time within the pressing transition to renewables.
Renewables tasks ought to improve nature
It is shocking 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 laws are nonetheless firmly centered on avoiding impacts to nature, and offsetting injury when it happens.
As a substitute, we’d like insurance policies and legal guidelines that compel nature-positive approaches that regenerate biodiversity.
In California, for instance, a check undertaking to develop native vegetation beneath 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 indicators we might transfer in the same course.
It isn’t arduous to envisage a renewables rollout that prioritizes tasks on degraded, ex-agricultural land, avoiding injury to vital habitats and benefiting nature. Wind generators ought 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 reveals sturdy potential west of the Nice Dividing Vary for power era with out the identical stage of land-use battle with pure values and productive agriculture.
A significant problem to power undertaking growth in Queensland, as in another components of Australia, is an absence of transmission infrastructure, or “poles and wires”, within the locations the place renewable power and nature might most fortunately coexist. This infrastructure ought to urgently be developed in a manner that doesn’t impression pure vegetation and species habitats.
Quickly reaching internet zero is just not negotiable to avoiding the worst ravages of local weather change. However doing so in a manner that damages nature is self-defeating. Now we have the planning instruments and information wanted to create a nature-positive local weather transition. Now we’d like sufficient state and Commonwealth authorities funding, management and political will.
The Dialog
This text is republished from The Dialog beneath a Artistic Commons license. Learn the unique article.
Quotation:
A renewable power transition that does not hurt nature? It isn’t simply potential, it is important (2024, June 8)
retrieved 8 June 2024
from https://techxplore.com/information/2024-06-renewable-energy-transition-doesnt-nature.html
This doc is topic to copyright. Other than any honest dealing for the aim of personal examine or analysis, no
half could also be reproduced with out the written permission. The content material is supplied for data functions solely.