Hard Cases
Can Europe have its renewable energy and biodiversity too?
The European Union (EU) is often lauded for its ambitious goals when it comes to curbing climate change and protecting biodiversity. By 2020, for example, it has pledged to halt biodiversity losses and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% from 1990 levels. But efforts to reach the two goals are likely to come into increasing conflict, predicts a new analysis – especially as European nations move to build massive new renewable energy projects.
Plenty of policy makers have said that preventing climate change and protecting biodiversity are inextricably linked, Andrew L.R. Jackson of Ireland’s Trinity College Dublin notes in Global Environmental Change. And “seeking win–win solutions is all very well, of course,” he writes. “But what of the challenges posed by hard cases?” – such as big clean energy projects, like dams and tidal power installations, that can also harm ecosystems. In 2003, he notes, construction of a wind farm in Ireland caused ecological damage that killed 50,000 fish and seriously damaged spawning grounds.
“The posing of such questions might be regarded as controversial by some conservationists,” Jackson adds. “However, these are issues that policy-makers will face in the coming years, and to date they have received scant attention.”
To turn up the spotlight, Jackson examines two real-life cases in which renewable energy projects have conflicted with the EU’s stringent environmental policies: the Sabor Dam in Portugal, and a proposed tidal power project in the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) Severn estuary. “Both projects were promoted, at least in part, on the basis of their potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” he notes.
In the case of the dam, which was originally proposed in 1996, studies made it clear construction would drown critical habitat for a number of endangered birds and plants, and wipe out a number of “priority conservation areas” protected under Europe’s Natura 2000 protected areas program. “Given the strict protection afforded to Natura 2000 sites by EU law, the odds seemed stacked against the dam,” Jackson notes. But in 2008, the EU – which by then was led by Jose Manuel Barroso, who had been Portugal’s prime minister when the dam was originally approved — dropped its objections to the project. Many observers believe Barroso personally intervened to save the dam, which is now set to be finished in 2014.
That outcome might signal that the EU is willing to relax its biodiversity laws to facilitate renewable energy projects, Jackson notes. But the UK’s proposed Severn estuary project suggests things aren’t so simple. Studies have shown the project, which would involve building long barriers in a narrow inlet with strong tides, could harm at least four Natura 2000 protected sites. And EU laws suggest the UK would be required to undertake a massive and expensive effort to create “compensatory” wetlands, mudflats and other ecosystems to replace those damaged by the project.
Not surprisingly, Jackson writes, those requirements drew objections from some project backers, who argued that the EU’s biodiversity policies needed to be revised “in light of the challenges presented by climate change.” But some experts criticized that approach as politically risky and likely to undermine the UK’s environmental image. So far, the project remains stalled, although a 2010 feasibility study concluded that it had ‘‘started an important and timely debate, [which] represents a real opportunity for the broadening of thinking about biodiversity conservation in the face of the twin challenges of climate change and the scale of energy infrastructure development that will be need to be put in place across the EU.’’
The two projects show “that the EU’s strict biodiversity protection regime could necessitate the rejection of many large renewable energy projects,” Jackson argues. But the legal issues should not “be regarded as insurmountable problems, nor as a trigger for reforms aimed at weakening biodiversity protections,” he argues. “Rather, these issues are better regarded as an opportunity for an open, informed, global debate regarding the relationship between biodiversity and climate change policies, and the hierarchy, if any, between them.” One solution, he writes, could include drafting new EU rules that place a greater emphasis on energy conservation as an alternative to building new generating capacity.
“There is an old legal saying, ‘hard cases make bad law,’” he concludes. “We now face the task of ensuring that hard renewable energy cases do not make bad nature conservation policy.” – David Malakoff | August 8, 2011
Source: Jackson, A.L.R., Renewable energy vs. biodiversity: Policy conflicts and the future of nature conservation. Global Environ. Change (2011), doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.07.001
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