Renewable energy is a promising alternative to fossil fuel-based energy, but its development can require a complex set of environmental tradeoffs. A recent increase in solar energy systems, especially large, centralized installations, underscores the urgency of understanding their environmental interactions. Synthesizing literature across numerous disciplines, we review direct and indirect environmental impacts - both beneficial and adverse - of utility-scale solar energy (USSE) development, including impacts on biodiversity, land-use and land-cover change, soils, water resources, and human health. Additionally, we review feedbacks between USSE infrastructure and land-atmosphere interactions and the potential for USSE systems to mitigate climate change. Several characteristics and development strategies of USSE systems have low environmental impacts relative to other energy systems, including other renewables. We show opportunities to increase USSE environmental co-benefits, the permitting and regulatory constraints and opportunities of USSE, and highlight future research directions to better understand the nexus between USSE and the environment. Increasing the environmental compatibility of USSE systems will maximize the efficacy of this key renewable energy source in mitigating climatic and global environmental change. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

/pdf/environmental-impacts-of-utility-scale-solar-energy-43rahsg0xr.pdf

Environmental impacts of utility-scale solar energy

The likely adverse environmental impacts of renewable energy sources

Large areas of public land are currently being permitted or evaluated for utility-scale solar energy development (USSED) in the southwestern United States, including areas with high biodiversity and protected species. However, peer-reviewed studies of the effects of USSED on wildlife are lacking. The potential effects of the construction and the eventual decommissioning of solar energy facilities include the direct mortality of wildlife; environmental impacts of fugitive dust and dust suppressants; destruction and modification of habitat, including the impacts of roads; and off-site impacts related to construction material acquisition, processing, and transportation. The potential effects of the operation and maintenance of the facilities include habitat fragmentation and barriers to gene flow, increased noise, electromagnetic field generation, microclimate alteration, pollution, water consumption, and fire. Facility design effects, the efficacy of site-selection criteria, and the cumulative effects of US...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/bio.2011.61.12.8

Wildlife Conservation and Solar Energy Development in the Desert Southwest, United States

There is a great resurgence of interest all over the world in the development of ‘small’ hydropower systems (SHS). The surge is essentially propelled by the belief that SHS, which include mini, micro, and picahydel systems, are a source of clean energy with little or no adverse impacts on the environment. This paper presents an overview of SHS and then examines in detail whether the prevalent belief in the great environment-friendliness of SHS is really justified. It is brought out that widespread use of SHS is likely to cause, per kilowatt of power generated, no less significantly adverse environmental impacts than large hydropower systems and some other conventional sources of energy. While supporting the ongoing global efforts to maximize the use of SHS, the authors advocate much greater circumspection than is being exercised at present vis-a-vis SHS. The authors believe that if the likely pitfalls are foreseen before SHS are put to widespread use, and remedial measures taken accordingly, it may save the world from considerable disillusionment and environmental damage.

Small hydro and the environmental implications of its extensive utilization

Energy issues are fueling expanded and contested policy differences as well as political and economic conflicts and a general social–ecological crisis of now major proportions Current energy dilem

New geographies of energy: Introduction to the special issue

Several common themes emerge from this overview. Ecological effects arising from habitat loss are difficult to assess accurately because habitat loss is a slow process of chipping away of life support systems for wildlife. Yet the integrated process leads to sizeable destruction of natural habitat. In general, stresses on ecosystems do not act in isolation from stresses due to natural fluctuations such as rainfall and temperature. The synergistic effects resulting from the coupling of energy-related and natural stresses is very poorly understood. Both better background statistical information about natural fluctuations in space and time, and far more field observation during conditions of combined man-made and natural stress will be needed to reduce significantly the important uncertainties here. Uncertainties differ greatly within the three types of impact reviewed--stress, ecological effects, and human consequences. Stresses have received the most attention and are the best understood, while human consequence of ecological degradation are largely ignored and are most poorly understood. Of course, qualitatively, that is the way it must be, for you cannot understand effects without understanding the stresses, and you cannot understand consequences without knowing the effects. Yet the degree of imbalance is unnecessary, and without far greater emphasis on effects andmore » human consequences and true cost to society of our energy systems will continue to go unnoticed. 123 references. (PCS)« less

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.eg.03.110178.000533

Energy technologies and natural environments: the search for compatibility

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Energy technologies and natural environments: the search for compatibility