In person icon Governing the Conflicts Between Accelerated Renewable Energy Deployment and Nature Protection

Abstract

There is a broad scientific consensus that the world is facing two pressing crises: climate crisis and biodiversity crisis. While addressing the two crises can largely go hand in hand with climate mitigation being one of the key solutions to biodiversity loss, in practice the decision-makers are increasingly confronted with difficult choices and forced to make trade-offs. This has become most visible in the case of renewable energy sources (RES). In a bid to decarbonize the energy system and phase-out harmful greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy technologies, such as wind and solar power, have enjoyed growing public support and market diffusion. However, as renewable energy projects have grown in number, the conflicts with nature conservation and biodiversity protection have also become more frequent. With the adoption of the European Green Deal, and particularly in response to the outbreak of Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU has significantly elevated its renewable energy targets aiming to reach at least 42,5% share of renewables in the energy mix by 2030. To achieve this target, the EU has enacted a set of far-reaching rules for unifying and accelerating the permitting procedures for renewable energy projects. A central element to the EU permitting reform is an obligation for member states to treat renewable energy sources as being in overriding public interest and to designate acceleration areas in which renewable energy projects will be exempted from the environmental impact assessment. In parallel, the EU has also adopted the Nature Restoration Law requiring member states to set aside the land for restoration and align this process with the spatial planning for renewable energy sources. The increase in the salience of the tension between renewable energy sources and nature protection is by no means only restricted to the EU countries and has the potential to significantly affect the speed and acceptance of renewable energy transitions.

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