期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2022
卷号：119
期号：6
DOI：10.1073/pnas.2104764119
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Significance
Conservation scientists warn of the threat to area-based conservation posed by renewable energy infrastructure. Here, we show that the current and near-term overlap of the two land uses need not be as severe as previously suggested. This is important, as global efforts to decarbonize energy systems are central to mitigating against climate change and the strong negative impacts of projected climate change on biodiversity.
Protected areas and renewable energy generation are critical tools to combat biodiversity loss and climate change, respectively. Over the coming decades, expansion of the protected area network to meet conservation objectives will be occurring alongside rapid deployment of renewable energy infrastructure to meet climate targets, driving potential conflict for a finite land resource. Renewable energy infrastructure can have negative effects on wildlife, and co-occurrence may mean emissions targets are met at the expense of conservation objectives. Here, we assess current and projected overlaps of wind and solar photovoltaic installations and important conservation areas across nine global regions using spatially explicit wind and solar data and methods for predicting future renewable expansion. We show similar levels of co-occurrence as previous studies but demonstrate that once area is accounted for, previous concerns about overlaps in the Northern Hemisphere may be largely unfounded, although they are high in some biodiverse countries (e.g., Brazil). Future projections of overlap between the two land uses presented here are generally dependent on priority threshold and region and suggest the risk of future conflict can be low. We use the best available data on protected area degradation to corroborate this level of risk. Together, our findings indicate that while conflicts between renewables and protected areas inevitably do occur, renewables represent an important option for decarbonization of the energy sector that would not significantly affect area-based conservation targets if deployed with appropriate policy and regulatory controls.
