Proposal 3: Protect Ecosystems & Biodiversity
False solution in current permitting reform proposals: Many permitting reform proposals don’t even pretend to be serious about decarbonization. Instead, they serve to boost all sorts of energy extraction, enabling energy addition rather than an energy transition. But even the permitting reform proposals that are serious about decarbonization can fall into the trap of decoupling the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis, which can’t really be separated. A smart and just energy transition would replace fossil fuels with renewables in strategic ways that lessen, rather than deepen, the human imprint on nature, protecting imperiled ecosystems from further destabilization.
Real Solutions
- Developers, utilities, and government agencies can undertake smart land-use planning to identify best sites for low-impact, equitable, and uncontroversial renewable energy development. This effort can be bolstered by new legislation. Read more:
- Planning to Build Faster: A Solar Energy Case Study, Roosevelt Institute (October 2024)
- Repurposed Energy, Alexandra B. Klass and Hannah Jacobs Wiseman, Minnesota Law Review (March 2024)
- A Progressive Take on Permitting Reform: Principles and Policies to Unleash a Faster, More Equitable Green Transition, Roosevelt Institute and Climate and Community Institute (August 2023)
- Minimizing habitat conflicts in meeting net-zero energy targets in the western United States, Grace C Wu et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2023)
- Low-impact land use pathways to deep decarbonization of electricity, Grace C Wu et al, Environmental Research Letters (July 2020)
- Techno–ecological synergies of solar energy for global sustainability, Rebecca R. Hernandez et al, Nature Sustainability (July 2019)
- State and federal agencies can merge conservation and renewable energy development planning to protect ecosystems and expand clean energy at once. This effort can be bolstered by new legislation. Read more:
- Don’t Open The Gates: The Latest Dirty Deal In Congress A Trojan Horse, Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, Western Environmental Law Center (September 2024)
- Down to the Wire: Progressive Permitting Reforms Will Accelerate Renewable Energy and Transmission Buildout and Help Meet U.S. Climate Targets, NRDC (September 2023)
- Why Conservation Leasing on Public Lands Is a Win-Win for Renewables and Wildlife, Center for American Progress (June 2023)
- See the Center for Biological Diversity’s page on the state of California and BLM’s Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan
- See the “Balancing Renewable Energy Siting and Conservation” case study in A Progressive Take on Permitting Reform