The overall situation is bleak. You don’t have to look far to observe how biodiversity is disappearing around us. How long has it been since you last heard a thrush sing? The 2020 Living Planet Report by the World Wide Fund for Nature summarizes it nicely: “Biodiversity is being lost at a rate never seen before in history.” Forests are being felled, oceans are being polluted, and wetlands are being destroyed.The main source of this devastation is human growth. With new cities springing up all over the place, the impact on biodiversity will only grow. Over the next few decades, energy consumption is predicted to rise dramatically, with much of the extra capacity coming from renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydropower (fingers crossed). Increasing clean energy sources is critical to lowering greenhouse gas emissions and reaching the Paris Agreement’s goals. What, though, is the impact of the renewable energy push on biodiversity?
The mitigation hierarchy is the most frequent technique to controlling biodiversity impacts from hydropower. The mitigation hierarchy consists of four steps: prevent, minimize, mitigate, and compensate. To begin, a project should constantly strive to minimize or eliminate unwanted or bad effects. This can include adjustments in site selection or project design in the case of hydropower to avoid flooding of sensitive biodiversity regions. When avoiding negative consequences isn’t possible, projects should try to minimize them..
“Installation went very smoothly; there were no hidden costs & all paperwork was completed seamlessly.”
// Silvester Scott
solar output efficiency
To help conserve biodiversity, industry, governments, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) must collaborate to identify and address negative impacts of hydropower on biodiversity, as well as develop innovative solutions to avoid, minimize, mitigate, and compensate for these impacts as early in the project cycle as possible.
- Electric bills can be reduced or eliminated.
- Improve the value of your home
- Reduce your carbon footprint.
Energo and its members have a critical role to play in enhancing understanding and supporting the implementation of international best practices on biodiversity management as an organization dedicated to advancing sustainable hydropower.