Bad news! So much for so called (intermittent and unreliable) renewable energy!
Notice here again the AAAS use of awful climate change demagoguery! Or is the AAAS even admiring/promoting an authoritarian regime by the Communist Party of China?
Notice the study below also seems to confuse/conflate solar power farms and the replacement of diverse natural landscapes with dense homogeneous vegetation.
So solar panel farms do not only spoil nature!
We have known for a long time that wind turbine farms are mass killers of birds, bats, and insects! Plus, besides spoiling nature, they cause noise pollution!
"... In China, strong governmental policy has led to solar panels covering thousands of square kilometers.
Since birds are highly responsive to transformations in habitat and vegetation that can impact their breeding and migratory sites, assessing corresponding changes in bird diversity can serve as an indicator of wider ecological disturbance.
Researchers analyzed the overlap between pro-solar governmental policies and bird observations, as well as changes in land use, vegetation, and agricultural productivity, from 2014 to 2023 in 2344 Chinese counties. They found that stronger solar policies correlated with a reduction in bird biodiversity, especially in wealthy and nondesert regions. ..."
"... Just as climate policy requires credible estimates of climate damages [???] to inform the social cost of carbon, credible estimates of biodiversity values are needed when sustainable development policies alter ecosystems."
"Editor’s summary
The world needs to develop clean, renewable energy [???]. However, given the enormous human population and our energy needs, clean energy also will have a large footprint on nature.
Solar energy represents one of the cleanest forms [???] of renewables, but solar farms can greatly alter the environment.
Zhang et al. looked at the effects of solar power–promoting policies on bird diversity across over 2000 counties in China ... They found that counties with the most pro-photovoltaic policies had reductions in bird diversity, primarily due to land conversion. They argue that solar developments must be proactive about countering such losses, especially focusing siting efforts in regions such as deserts [???], where vegetation alteration can be minimized. ...
Abstract
Could the global transition to renewable energy create a green dilemma that pits carbon reduction against biodiversity conservation?
This study examined the effect of policies promoting solar photovoltaics on local avian biodiversity using a panel dataset covering 2344 counties in China from 2014 to 2023. Policies that favored photovoltaic expansion led to reductions in bird diversity, disproportionately affecting wealthier and nondesert regions, as well as widespread species.
The mechanism operated primarily through land conversion: Cropland and grassland were transformed into developed areas, reducing the diversity of vegetation.
Paradoxically, the leaf area index increased, a pattern we term “inferior greening,” whereby diverse natural landscapes were replaced by dense but ecologically homogeneous vegetation.
We argue that future photovoltaic development should be accompanied by strict biodiversity safeguards, especially in economically developed regions with high habitat complexity."
From the paper:
"The global imperative [???] to mitigate climate change has catalyzed an unprecedented expansion of renewable energy, with solar photovoltaics at the forefront. This transition, essential for decarbonization [???], can entail a profound transformation of land use, creating a potential conflict with biodiversity conservation. Nowhere is this dynamic more pronounced than in China, where the carbon neutrality strategy [???] is driving a massive expansion of solar capacity projected to constitute nearly 45% of its energy mix by 2060. ...
The large-scale deployment of solar arrays driven by these policies often results in severe habitat fragmentation and the loss of essential foraging and breeding grounds, threatening avian populations regardless of flock size. ..."
Beyond carbon in renewable energy policy (perspective, open access) "China’s policy-driven solar expansion shows why climate policy appraisal should look at biodiversity impacts"
China’s solar expansion policy reduces bird diversity (open access)
Many counties in China supporting solar energy development had reductions in bird diversity, potentially reflecting the ecological consequences of land conversion. [Does this not look really awful!]
Fig. 1. The spatial distribution of solar energy expansion and bird diversity across China.
The figure presents county-level choropleth maps illustrating the geographic patterns of key variables. White areas indicate missing data.
(A) Photovoltaic policy stringency index (PSI), measured as the weighted sum of policy documents at provincial, municipal, and county levels.
(B) The total area of centralized photovoltaic power stations within each county.
(C) Bird diversity (ShannonBD), calculated as the negative sum of the proportion of each bird species multiplied by its natural logarithm. Nanhai Zhudao, South China Sea Islands.
No comments:
Post a Comment