Cumulative barriers to renewable energy development: can we adjust our perspective and approach to benefit biodiversity?

1. Renewable energy development is rapidly increasing in efforts to mitigate climate change. Whilst the impact of individual projects on biological diversity may be limited, there is a risk of significant cumulative impacts across projects, resulting in a conflict between our needs for renewable energy and to preserve biodiversity.

2. A range of approaches have been developed for cumulative impact assessment (CIA). Biologically realistic approaches advocated in the peer-reviewed literature have challenging data requirements and are more complex than those widely used by practitioners and regulators to inform assessments.

3. Projected cumulative impacts are approaching levels where future development ofthe industry is at risk, with concerns that this is driven by an overly precautionary approach, a direct consequence of insufficient data.

4. A “race to submission”, whereby developers aim to submit their assessments as early as possible in an attempt to avoid being the project that triggers an unacceptable cumulative impact, exacerbates this problem. This leads to situations whereby consented projects may not reflect the optimal balance between minimising biodiversity impacts and delivery of renewable energy targets.

5. There is an urgent need to shift the focus of CIA from the anthropogenic activities, which drive the need for assessments, to the populations concerned. This will require international agreement on minimum standards for robust assessment and coordination of data collection. A failure to achieve this may mean that delivering the renewable energy required to minimise the impacts of climate change in an ecologically sustainable manner becomes a regulatory impossibility.