How do we help advance solar and wind energy projects that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions while also protecting sensitive wildlife and their habitat?

As wind development grows in places like Oregon and Idaho, coordinated landscape-scale planning for both renewable energy and conservation can help us find the best places to build wind farms while protecting and improving habitat for pronghorn and other wildlife. (©Larry Andreasen)

We know that traditional energy sources like oil, gas and coal pose great risks to wildlife, be it from oil spills, habitat destruction or the release of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. But what about renewable energy, like solar and wind?

These are an essential part of reducing the pollution that comes from our energy use. But their size and how they function can have a huge impact on wildlife and their habitat. So, how can we develop these renewable energy resources without sacrificing wildlife?

The answer, as the saying goes, is “location, location, location.”

Traditionally, energy developers and land managers have picked project sites by focusing on the available energy resource; thinking about how those projects might affect natural resources and wildlife was an afterthought. But this way of doing business inevitably leads to delays, uncertainty, and conflict when developers discover after the fact that sensitive, threatened, or endangered wildlife may be on the site.

That’s where we come in.

Planning ahead for solar energy development in the desert Southwest can allow us to develop solar projects in the right places while protecting essential habitat for the Desert tortoise. (©Beth Jackson/FWS)

Defenders and our partners are working to change this paradigm in ways that reduce the potential for conflicts with wildlife while still permitting responsible renewable energy development to go ahead in the right places.

It starts with a landscape-scale analysis of energy potential and wildlife conservation priorities using many of the mapping tools and technologies currently available from state and federal wildlife agencies and non-profit conservation organizations. This allows energy developers to identify areas of potential energy-wildlife conflict and avoid them.

Next, developers can attempt to minimize wildlife impacts by adjusting the project’s scope or the way in which the project will be operated (e.g., installing radar to detect when birds are migrating through an area and shutting down wind turbines to reduce the likelihood of collisions).

Finally, when facing unavoidable impacts, developers can offset them by purchasing or restoring habitat or contributing funds to a “mitigation bank” from which proceeds can be used to protect other lands that will benefit the wildlife and habitats impacted by the project. The idea is to ensure that lands and habitat acquired or restored will make up for the lands lost or disturbed by the energy project.

Combined, these mechanisms for dealing with the potential risks posed by a project are referred to as the “mitigation framework.” And, they are the means by which we can produce renewable energy without sacrificing sensitive lands and wildlife in return.

Defenders is developing and promoting this approach on many fronts. Last June, Defenders and our partners hosted a workshop on mitigation policy in Washington, DC. Leaders from the conservation community, energy industries, and state and federal agencies gathered to discuss the latest techniques and tools in mitigation and how to continue to improve their use. We followed that up this spring with another workshop at the annual North American Wildlife and Natural Resources conference in Arlington, VA, where Defenders and others led a series of panels and presentations on landscape-level planning and mitigation.

Panoramic view of the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone in southern Nevada’s Mojave Desert. (©BLM)

In between these two conferences, we have been working on using the mitigation framework to improve the planning and placement of individual solar and wind projects, and we participated in a series of groundbreaking workshops led by the Bureau of Land Management to define the first Region-wide Mitigation Plan for one of the solar energy zones identified by the Department of the Interior in their western solar plan. We helped Argonne National Laboratory develop a new data mapping tool for understanding and reducing wildlife conflict in transmission line planning, worked with the Arizona BLM on its first-of-a-kind Restoration Design Energy Program to identify and avoid places of high conflict across the landscape, and we continue to participate in the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan process in California.

As our country further embraces renewable energy, the question of how it affects wildlife and habitat will continue to be key, and Defenders is committed to promoting a landscape-scale approach to planning for energy and wildlife conservation in key areas. Remember: “location, location, location…” By using existing science and mapping technologies, we can work with the solar and wind energy industries to help them build better projects – better for wildlife and better for them because reducing conflicts with wildlife increases the likelihood that projects get built in less time and at lower cost. That, in turn, means that more clean energy is available to meet our nation’s energy needs and less dirty energy is needed. And that will benefit us all, particularly sensitive wildlife already threatened by a warming planet and increasing habitat loss.

©Nathan Ferdinandt

This is the time of year when everyone is making New Year’s resolutions. Mine? To save energy, wildlife and the environment!

And thanks to Solar City, I can check this one off the list: DONE. They made it so easy! After hearing a pitch from one of their representatives at Defenders a few months ago, I was intrigued. So I contacted them to see if my house was a good candidate for solar energy. They did a quick Google Maps search for my house and said it was a great candidate. Next, they sent their staff out to take a closer look and sure enough, my entire roof could be covered in solar panels. Not only that, but for just a little bit of money up front, I get to lock in the price I pay for my solar energy for the next 20 years. So while local utility bills go up at about 6-10% a year depending on where you live, I have locked in at a rate that won’t increase. Solar City is very flexible, so don’t let costs dissuade you from contacting them. They even have a deal for no money down that is worth learning more about.

The process was super easy. My husband and I signed the contract and Solar City did the rest, including dealing with all of the permitting with the city and coordinating with my local utility company. Within a month (although they say it can take up to 4 months for the installation) they scheduled an appointment to set the panels. It took two days to get the panels up; they scheduled the inspection with the city within the week, and once the paperwork goes through with my local utility company, I will be running on clean, green, solar energy! It’s also good for wildlife. Using my rooftop for renewable energy reduces the need to build large solar installations in or around areas important for wildlife habitat.

I created a video of the installation so you can see what the panels and other equipment looks like. Check it out below and, if you are interested, contact Solar City for a personal consultation. The whole process was quick and easy. And as an added bonus, if you mention Defenders of Wildlife, Solar City will donate $400 to help advance our mission to conserve and protect wildlife.

Make a New Year’s resolution that you can keep this year. Visit Solar City today and tell them Defenders of Wildlife sent you.

I congratulate the President on his victory and am excited to work with him and his administration in the coming months and years. There is a lot of work to do to protect our natural heritage for future generations and hopefully we can now collectively return our attention to meaningful progress on a whole host of issues.

First and foremost is the so-called fiscal cliff. Many programs will be hurt by the looming spending cuts, and conservation programs are no exception. Everything from national parks and forests to wildlife refuges and other public lands could be threatened. I am confident that the president shares our sense of urgency on this matter and will do all he can to find a balanced solution in the face of these potentially devastating cuts.

Once we address the fiscal cliff, we desperately need to tackle climate change. This is the most pressing issue in our country, and we cannot wait any longer. We need swift action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and new policies that will help humans and wildlife adapt to our rapidly changing environment.

We also need to seriously address the threat of wildlife extinction. The Endangered Species Act once served as a model for a world struggling with widespread extinction; now it suffers from inadequate enforcement, chronic underfunding and a hostile political environment. These things have to change before more species sink forever into the abyss of extinction. Most importantly, while the ESA has proven to be a highly effective bulwark against extinction, we need the Administration to accelerate the recovery of hundreds of species that are in urgent need of more focused conservation efforts.

Furthermore, the President should reaffirm his past promise to let science guide natural resource policy in his administration. Important conservation policy decisions need to be grounded in and guided by science, and not be driven by what is politically expedient. That should be something we all agree upon.

Lastly, the President should continue his push to wean our country off outdated, dirty energy sources like oil, gas and coal, and focus on 21st century clean energy solutions. But we need to make sure we do this in a smart way that doesn’t destroy important wildlife or habitat resources.

There is so much work to be done to protect and restore our air, land, water and wildlife for future generations. The president has run his last campaign, and it is our hope that, freed from the bonds of politics, he will be a real conservation leader as we strive to protect our natural heritage. At Defenders, we stand ready to work with him as we face the challenges ahead.

The pictures coming out of New York and New Jersey are heartbreaking, to say the least. Hurricane Sandy shows us how deadly, dangerous and costly climate silence can be for our communities, our wildlife and the species places we all love.
Check out my latest op-ed in the Huffington Post to read more about this issue: http://dfnd.us/YvqcSs

Aerial photo of Mantoloking, New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy. (Photo credit: Greg Thompson/USFWS)

A basic tenet of Defenders’ work on renewable energy is that we try to balance the long-term benefits of renewable energy with its immediate impacts on wildlife, like habitat loss from large-scale solar development and the potential for bird and bat strikes from poorly-placed wind turbines. That’s why our work is all about minimizing the impacts of energy use as we try to work out the best deal possible for wildlife while promoting the renewable energy we need as a society.

And that’s why I get so excited when we find win-win opportunities to develop renewable energy without harming wildlife—by developing solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass facilities on landfills, hazardous waste sites, abandoned mine fields, and other disturbed and degraded lands that may not be valuable as wildlife habitat. We incorporate this concept into much of our renewable energy work, including  the Restoration Design Energy Project in Arizona, which is searching for disturbed public and private lands that can be used for wind and solar development. We use a similar approach with our advocacy for projects on degraded farm fields, like 8minutenergy’s Mt. Signal and Calexico I & II solar power plants in California’s Imperial Valley.

The EPA, with its REPowering America’s Lands program, is working steadily to help communities across the country join us in using this concept to guide renewable energy development to those places best suited for it.

So far, the program has inventoried and mapped thousands of potentially contaminated land and mine sites across the country  — sites that do not make for good wildlife habitat — and estimated their renewable energy potential. They have also produced best practice reports and handbooks on siting renewable energy projects on these types of lands; published solar and wind decision trees [PDFs] to help planning organizations determine the best potential locations for renewable energy on degraded lands in their communities; and helped property owners and communities understand liability concerns and redevelopment options for these sites. They have analyzed both the technical potential for renewable energy development and the more realistic potential for development in states that have Renewable Portfolio Standards(requirements that renewable energy make up a certain percentage of the state’s energy consumption) to drive demand. The campaign has

This solar array in Fort Carson, Colorado was built atop a closed landfill (Photo credit: U.S. Army Environmental Command)

looked across many types of renewable energy: both utility- and community-scale wind, off-grid wind and solar, concentrating and photovoltaic solar, biopower, various geothermal technologies, and landfill gas. And in California, the program has developed priority lists and maps of the top 75 of over 11,000 tracked sites in the state, providing a road map to the best places for producing lots of wildlife-friendly renewable energy.

We recognize that we won’t be able to meet all of our nation’s tremendous energy needs from capped landfills alone. However, every little bit helps, and in many places these projects provide good economic returns without risk to wildlife or local communities. In fact, that’s why Defenders, through our California office, will be working with the EPA during the next couple of months to figure out how we can apply the REPowering America database and siting recommendations to the California Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP). We hope that southern California’s contaminated and disturbed lands can make a big contribution to meeting the state’s energy needs for the coming decades without putting wildlife and wild lands at risk.

From my perspective, finding the right places to put renewable energy development is one of the most important things we can do for ourselves, our future, and our country’s wildlife. We need an enormous amount of renewable energy to combat climate change, which coupled with habitat loss is the single biggest long-term threat to wildlife and biodiversity. Taking places that we’ve already damaged and putting wind, solar, geothermal, and biogas plants there instead of in healthy habitats is a true win for wildlife.

Building solar “smart from the start” just makes sense

The U.S. Department of the Interior finalized new plans for solar energy development on public lands in the west on Tuesday after a prolonged joint effort among stakeholders and government officials to create environmentally responsible and economically beneficial renewable energy development guidelines.The large-scale plan, known as the Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement or SPEIS, will now set the stage for the next generation of renewable energy development in the West. And it will do so in a way that protects wildlife and habitat.

Proponents of solar energy have long sought guidelines for responsible development that would protect the interests of vulnerable wildlife/wildlands while also providing economic incentives for continued growth. With the announcement of this plan, the Interior has clearly emphasized that kind of “smart from the start” mindset, making it clear that protecting the environment will need to be a strong factor in future endeavors involving solar energy in the western U.S.

Because the release of the statement is so fresh, analysis will soon begin on the part of numerous organizations involved, including Defenders, to assess its various components. Keeping a close eye on this ongoing project is a necessary element to ensure we continue to develop renewable energy “smart from the start.” For now, however, the Interior’s announced plans show that long-term changes are on the way that could impact the environmental footprint of solar energy development for the better.

To read more about the solar plan, click on http://www.defenders.org/press-release/interior-unveils-first-ever-national-solar-energy-plan-public-lands