Humanity is confronting two challenges that will fundamentally reshape the world we live in: climate change and the global decline and extinction of wildlife. These two challenges are interconnected, but they are not the same. While it is true that solving climate change will help nature thrive, it is also true that building clean energy projects at the scale required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can pose real dangers to plants, animals, and wild places.
This presents a dilemma: can we effectively confront the climate crisis without accelerating the extinction crisis? And can we sustain the natural systems we need to survive, while also making it easier and faster to build the clean energy needed to reduce climate-warming pollution?
Finding a way to answer “yes” to both of these questions is easier said than done. There are real trade-offs between some climate solutions and the strategies needed to protect and restore wildlife. Rather than ignoring or minimizing these tensions, we should confront them head on, and pursue a vision for a secure, livable, healthy, and prosperous future that delivers not only more clean and affordable energy, but also more wildlife, more clean water, and more protection for the public lands and outdoor spaces that bind us together as a country.
Can we effectively confront the climate crisis without accelerating the extinction crisis?
For nature, that means being faithful to three core principles as we build. First, we should direct clean energy development to places where harm to wildlife is avoided as much as possible. Second, we should seek to minimize and mitigate unavoidable damage to natural systems and, when we do build projects, restore habitat whenever we can. And third, and very importantly, we should simultaneously advance new protections for wild places alongside the clean energy buildout.
The Nature-Climate Tension
Humanity is grappling with a sixth mass extinction: a world-defining decline in global wildlife and plant populations. By way of context, the fifth mass extinction—which was primarily caused by a massive asteroid that struck what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico—led to the disappearance of terrestrial dinosaurs. This time, we are the asteroid.
The evidence is everywhere: Scientists believe that one out of every eight species of living thing on our planet is now at risk of extinction. Recent research also indicates that the total biomass of wild mammals has decreased by more than 50% since the 1850s. In some ecosystems, including protected areas, scientists have recorded insect abundance declines of over 75% and now fear that nearly half of insect species could go extinct in the coming decades.
What does that mean for people? It’s not just that the only place your grandchildren may be able to see a polar bear is in a zoo or that your kids could grow up without fireflies in their backyard. One out of every three bites of the food we eat is pollinated by insects. Over 50% of commercially available drugs are derived from non-human species. Biodiversity keeps our soil healthy and creates the very air we breathe.
While it is true that there is no path to saving the world’s living things that does not confront the climate crisis, it is also true that a rapid build-out of renewable energy has the potential to make the extinction crisis worse.
Climate change is a growing cause of species decline. As the Earth continues to warm, ecosystems are being disrupted at a fundamental level. Flowers are blooming too early for some pollinators, drought is fueling unprecedented wildfires, and oceans are becoming more acidic. Yet climate change is not the leading cause of extinction. The age-old problem of habitat destruction, for uses such as road building, mining, and development, drives far more of the decline in biodiversity than climate change.
That is why, while it is true that there is no path to saving the world’s living things that does not confront the climate crisis, it is also true that a rapid build-out and expansion of renewable energy has the potential to make the extinction crisis worse. For starters, clean energy generation projects, such as industrial solar and wind installations, have large physical footprints owing to their high land-use requirements, even relative to fossil fuel extraction. Larger footprints can mean increased habitat fragmentation and destruction. Clean energy also makes intensive use of iron, copper, steel, and critical minerals—materials that must be extracted from mines that destroy habitat and disrupt critical ecosystems. And, beyond land use, the operation of clean energy projects can itself have significant impacts on wildlife, including behavior disruption, direct mortality, and habitat fragmentation.
In short, renewable energy is “clean,” but it isn’t magic. Building at the speed and scale demanded by climate change requires a massive program of industrialization that will have consequences for wildlife and ecosystems. But we can learn from past waves of industrialization—including from the mistakes made in the extraction of oil, gas, and coal—to more thoughtfully and carefully manage these risks by following three simple and mutually reinforcing principles: avoid, mitigate, and protect.
Avoid: Directing Development to the Least Bad Places for the Planet
The single best thing we can do to reduce conflicts between renewable energy and the needs of plants and animals is to choose where we build new projects with wildlife in mind. Fundamentally, we should build renewable energy projects and transmission lines in places that are least important for wildlife and plant populations. That means supporting rooftop solar, building on already disturbed lands, co-locating renewable development with transmission lines and major loads, and prioritizing suitable agricultural lands that can support projects such as wind farms without taking large areas out of production, while also providing a steady income stream to farmers.
The single best thing we can do to reduce conflicts between renewable energy and the needs of plants and animals is to choose where we build new projects with wildlife in mind.
The good news is that federal and state governments already have the tools to put much of this approach into practice on public lands. Take California’s Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) as an example. The DRECP, which the Natural Resources Defense Council, where I work, helped conceive more than a decade ago, is a joint state-federal effort that identified 22 million acres of desert ecosystems for both conservation and development. The plan explicitly protected sensitive habitats and wildlife corridors from development and included long-term conservation strategies for endangered species like the desert tortoise. At the same time, it identified areas for renewable energy development, helping speed approvals for responsibly sited projects.
There are lessons to be learned from this groundbreaking effort. For instance, the agreement was the result of a one-time round of negotiation rather than an ongoing collaboration, which left it unable to adapt to new information, expertise, and technological advancements as they came along. In 2024, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Western Solar Plan adopted many of the elements of and lessons learned from the California effort. It identified 31 million acres of suitable public land across 11 western states for utility-scale solar development and created a series of “solar application areas,” where solar development would be fast-tracked based on proximity to existing and planned transmission corridors, while accounting for factors ranging from endangered species and wildlands to big game and visual resources.
These are precisely the kinds of planning efforts that governments should invest in and implement, to accelerate renewable energy while protecting the most sensitive lands and waters from development. For the federal government, that means including lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service in addition to the BLM, and, in federal ocean waters, creating marine spatial planning areas for wind development alongside a network of marine protected areas.
Congress also has an important role to play. It could provide resources to bring stakeholders together to identify places for renewable and transmission development, and it could ensure that resulting projects are fast-tracked through the permitting process. This could include accelerated timelines, financial incentives, and long-term regulatory certainty for developers. Congress could also accelerate the buildout of renewable energy on designated public lands by making projects eligible for federal leasing status, which confers legal protections for developers, and by centralizing permitting decisions on BLM lands in BLM’s Renewable Energy Coordination Office and providing the office with adequate funding.
Such reforms would help level the playing field with fossil fuels, bringing renewable development closer to the robust protections and support that the federal government currently gives the oil and gas industry. Moreover, making these reforms specific to zones identified for energy infrastructure would avoid weakening our bedrock environmental laws outside those areas.
Mitigate: Reduce the Impacts You Can’t Avoid and Restore Habitat Where You Can
Directed development of clean energy can go a long way toward reducing the impacts of these projects on the natural world, but if we are serious about tackling climate change, renewable energy and transmission will inevitably be built in places that affect wildlife. Fortunately, there are significant steps we can take to reduce that harm.
For example, there are well-understood things that wind developers can do to reduce bird and bat mortality at their facilities. Most bat mortalities at wind farms occur when wind speeds are low, so raising the “cut-in” speed—the wind speed at which turbine blades begin to rotate—is a proven way to reduce bat fatalities. Carefully monitoring bird migrations using radar and other technologies, and then turning blades off to allow birds safe passage, is another proven method. Some studies have even found that changing the color of wind turbine blades can reduce bird mortality by over seventy percent.
The impact of offshore wind development on whales can also be greatly reduced by timing construction to avoid migration periods, utilizing onboard observers, and other mitigation measures. These best management practices for offshore wind should become standard in the industry. As wind development moves into deeper water and floating platforms become necessary, there will be risk that lost and abandoned fishing gear, along with other ocean debris, could become snagged on the ropes and cables used to anchor and stabilize the platforms, and in turn entangle marine mammals and other wildlife. Monitoring for and removing this gear by using sonar and remotely operated underwater vehicles can lessen those impacts.
Bird collisions with transmission lines are a major source of mortality for certain species. But those deaths can be reduced by installing reflective and colored devices that make power lines more visible to birds and by separating conducting elements of electrical lines at distances that prevent electrocution. Avoiding electrocutions also reduces electrical outages and can help prevent wildfire.
It’s also important to note that not all impacts have to be bad; there are concrete things that renewable facilities can do that benefit nature. For example, both solar farms and transmission lines require active vegetation management at their facilities to keep plant growth from interfering with power production, reduce fire risk, and maintain access. Done well, this management can also provide much needed habitat to local species.
Not all impacts have to be bad; there are concrete things that renewable facilities can do that benefit nature.
In the Midwest, for instance, planting native low-growing grasses at solar facilities not only dramatically reduces the need for mowing between panels and prevents soil erosion, but has been shown to triple total insect abundance, with even larger increases reported for native bees. Another study by the same set of researchers looked at 13 solar facilities across five states and found that solar installations planted with native vegetation ("ecovoltaics") supported more diverse and stable communities of grassland birds than did standard row-crop farm fields. In some landscapes, vegetation management around transmission lines (a combination of mechanical thinning, planting of low-growing native grasses, and mowing) has also been shown to increase browsing habitat and support the movement of deer, moose, and small mammals.
Protect: Keep the Best Places Wild
Finally, one way to build support for the rapid deployment of clean energy is to show how it can also benefit the places people care about most. We can do this by tying new development to the creation of a network of connected and permanently protected areas set aside for conservation and recreation.
While “directed development” plans are effective in steering renewable development away from the most ecologically sensitive areas, they often don’t ensure those areas are protected from other impacts over the long term. Addressing this gap offers the promise of increasing public support for renewable deployment, particularly among rural and coastal communities, who are often troubled by the potential industrialization of public lands and waters. Fortunately, there are concrete steps we can take to improve the durability of these protections.
For example, the BLM designates “rights-of-way” for energy development. It could also use that authority to designate “conservation rights-of-way,” which were deployed during the Biden administration on a limited basis. Such rights-of-way could be an important part of regional conservation plans, allowing connectivity between protected areas and giving developers further guidance about areas to avoid when planning renewable development.
The BLM also has the power to withdraw lands from new oil, gas, and mining development; these withdrawals should go hand-in-hand with identifying areas for accelerated renewable development and fast-tracking permitting.
Finally, the Department of the Interior has existing authority to transfer BLM lands to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for management as part of the National Wildlife Refuge System. Unlike BLM, the FWS has a primary mission of protecting species and their ecosystems. These transfers would offer lands more durable protection and would also underscore the recreation benefits these protections can provide for local communities, especially those affected by increased renewable development.
We should pursue a vision for a future that delivers not only more clean and affordable energy, but also more wildlife, more clean water, and more protection for the public lands that bind us together as a country.
Congress has a role to play here as well. It could give agencies outside the Department of the Interior, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, authority to withdraw and transfer lands to more protected conservation status as part of an overall plan identifying areas for renewable development. Or it could establish new parks, wilderness areas, and recreation areas as part of a broader build agenda.
Legislation—such as the bipartisan Public Lands Renewable Energy Act, versions of which have been introduced in the House Natural Resources and the Agriculture committees—is also needed to permanently adopt state and county revenue sharing for renewable energy projects. Currently, fossil fuel revenues generated on federal lands and waters are split with the states, giving fossil fuels a significant political advantage over renewables in terms of state and county buy-in. These rules don’t apply to income generated by renewable energy projects, however. These bills would not only share renewable energy revenue with states and counties but also establish a renewable energy conservation fund dedicated to enhancing biodiversity and improving landscape management outcomes.
Reconciling Nature and Climate Imperatives
It’s important to be clear-eyed about the challenges and trade-offs we face.
On the one hand, tackling climate change requires the construction of renewable energy facilities and transmission lines at an unprecedented rate. If we want to protect both people and nature, we must rapidly reduce climate-warming emissions. On the other hand, the extinction crisis is equally real and poses just as great a threat to humanity’s future. Building renewable energy at the pace required to avert the worst impacts of climate change could have devastating effects on critical ecosystems.
We can reconcile these nature and climate imperatives. By choosing where to encourage rapid development while simultaneously protecting the most ecologically important places and pairing those projects with robust and durable conservation and mitigation measures, we can both create the energy infrastructure of the future and protect the plants and animals with which we share this beautiful planet.
