Solar Energy and Wildlife
Written by Emily Bails, SOPEC VISTA Member
One of SOPEC’s focuses is on our free Solar Assessment Program for rural small businesses and agricultural producers. After a 30-minute assessment, you receive a customized report with your specific estimate and information about grants, tax-based incentives, and other financing you can take advantage of by investing in solar.
While there are many factors to consider when investing in solar energy, such as how to finance your planned solar project, the availability of roof or ground space for a solar array, and how adding solar can affect your electricity usage, another factor to consider could be how solar could affect wildlife.
Climate change is shifting the distribution of wildlife throughout the world as habitats become unsuitable due to rising temperatures, flooding, and other natural disasters. Investing in renewable energy is an environmentally-friendly strategy to combat climate change and help mitigate these effects, both for wildlife and our own lives. While solar is becoming a fast-growing source of renewable energy, for those who also want to consider the environmental impacts of solar, knowing the effects of solar installations on local wildlife could be important in making their final decision to invest in solar.
In order to assess how wildlife could be affected by solar installations, it’s important to know which type of solar is being used. The most common solar, typically used for residential and large-scale solar developments, such as solar farms, is Photovoltaic (PV) solar.
Residential solar and commercial solar development built on existing infrastructure is generally not harmful to wildlife. Rooftop solar installations, for example, make use of already-built spaces, which decreases the risk of habitat fragmentation that can disrupt natural ecosystems and interfere with wildlife movements. While there is noise pollution from the installation — which can affect the ability of certain wildlife like amphibians who communicate acoustically — residential solar produces less noise pollution by using already-constructed roads, compared to other solar installations where temporary roads may need to be constructed.
Large-scale PV developments positively impact wildlife by acting as a shelter for prey species, and as roosting and nesting structures. They can provide a habitat for urban species. Vegetation planted around these structures can improve otherwise unsuitable habitats, such as brownfields, to a higher quality one, increasing wildlife diversity in areas with limited abundance or diversity. With better quality habitat comes more insect species which provides foraging opportunities for avian species and creates a pollinator-friendly environment.
However, large-scale PV developments may also disturb natural wildlife movements during the construction and development of new infrastructure. Temporary roads for construction can cause wildlife to avoid the area for lower-quality habitat with less noise pollution and lower human presence. For species that can’t detect structures well, this could lead to collisions with the solar infrastructure, and with human and vehicular traffic comes a higher risk of road mortality for mammal and amphibian species.
Large installations can also contribute to the theorized “lake effect” - waterbirds flying over these structures could mistake them as water bodies because of the reflective surfaces and try to land, leading to impact injuries and mortalities, and can strand water birds that can only take off in the water.
However, wildlife researchers are already looking at ways to mitigate these risks. The reflective surfaces of solar panels can incorporate designs that allow birds to distinguish the surfaces, similar to urban efforts to break up reflective windows. In addition, habitat loss can be minimized by cultivating crops or native plants under and around the panels. The panels can provide shade and rain run-off to the vegetation. In some rural areas, domestic farm animals could coexist with the panels.
The other form of solar is Concentrated Solar Power. While PV solar converts sunlight to energy by exciting electrons in a panel, CSP uses a system of mirrors to reflect a large amount of sunlight onto a receiver. This receiver contains a fluid that, once heated up, is used to boil water in a steam-turbine generator that generates electricity at a utility-level scale.
Concentrating sunlight creates a high-heat environment that can be detrimental to wildlife that attempt to fly through it. The polarized light reflected off the mirrors attracts insects, and the insects attract insectivores - like bird and bat species - which risk being singed or burnt from exposure to the solar heat. Construction of these facilities can decrease habitat for bird species, and cause habitat fragmentation. Light pollution from these solar facilities can also negatively affect night-time navigation, migration schedules, and other important cues for wildlife in the area. While light production could be minimized by suspending activity during large migration events, and habitat loss minimized by carefully selecting project sites (Smallwood 2022), research is still being done to determine other ways to mitigate mortality risks to wildlife.
However, this is not the type of solar rural small businesses and agricultural producers receiving our solar assessments would be pursuing. SOPEC’s REDA program is focused on small commercial-scale solar power using photovoltaic solar panels, and not utility-scale solar from concentrated solar power.
References:
Chock, Rachel Y., et al. "Evaluating potential effects of solar power facilities on wildlife from an animal behavior perspective." Conservation Science and Practice 3.2 (2021): e319. https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/csp2.319
Lovich, Jeffrey E., and Joshua R. Ennen. "Wildlife conservation and solar energy development in the desert southwest, United States." BioScience 61.12 (2011): 982-992. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/61/12/982/392612
Smallwood, K. Shawn. "Utility‐scale solar impacts to volant wildlife." The Journal of Wildlife Management 86.4 (2022): e22216. https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jwmg.22216