An Outstanding Opportunity: Using Solar Farms for Biodiversity Preservation

Principal Investigator

Renewable energy projects are growing at a remarkable rate in Australia In north Queensland alone, existing commercial solar plants supply 585MW of generation, and other, proposed plants will provide more than twice as much (QLD Gov Generation Map). As each megawatt requires 2-3 ha (QLD Gov Solar Farm Guidelines) this represents a very significant land area, and up to 70% of Queensland is suitable for solar development (Islam et al. REEE 2022). While this trend constitutes outstanding potential for energy generation, development of solar farms also will impose a significant impact on much of the land area. There is strong awareness of the social contract that such broadscale expansion must navigate, and a particular community concern is the scale of land development and modification (QLD Gov Solar Farm Guidelines). The community and the QLD Biodiversity Conservation Strategy expresses concern about the major loss of biodiversity occurring at unprecedented rates and scales, and identifies a need to manage broad-scale impacts on land area, as well as climate change. Nowhere is this so critical as in the tropics, which are both highly biodiverse and well suited to solar farms. The confluence of broad-scale solar development and the need for biodiversity conservation on large scales provides an unprecedented opportunity to combine the two. Solar farms present an opening for enhanced delivery of ecosystem services (Norberg et al. 2021 Solar Energy; Nordberg, Schwarzkopf 2023 Austral Ecology). Solar farms have long operational lifespans, experience low levels of disturbance during operation and can be managed for ecosystem services beyond low-carbon electricity generation, including biodiversity conservation (Carvalho et al. 2024 J Anim Ecol). In the UK, Europe and North America, appropriate management of solar farms can lead to increased plant, invertebrate, pollinator and bird diversity and abundance (reviewed by Boscarino-Gaetano et al. 2024 Biological Reviews),

01 Mar 2025 - 01 Mar 2026

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