“Renewable energy” habitat destruction offsets are just indulgence – does Watt have anything to say about this?

from CFACT

David Wojik

A bad idea has emerged in the world of “renewable energy”: projects can avoid destroying natural habitats by spending money. Wind and solar schemes still destroy the natural habitats they establish, but they fund a magic wand that supposedly creates new compensatory habitats elsewhere. Not really.

The fallacy here is that every acre of land in the United States already has habitat. You can change an acre of habitat from one form to another, but you can't create a form. This is a zero-sum game.

Having a long-standing, highly specialized development offset program helps illuminate this point. This is wetland protection under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Wetlands are considered so special that creating them elsewhere can offset development that fills them.

But if you turn dryland into wetland, you destroy dryland habitat. So the amount of habitat destruction has not decreased, just the amount of wetland destruction has decreased.

So-called renewable energy habitat destruction compensation is completely different from the 404 plan. Renewable energy developers simply pay to create habitat elsewhere, which is not possible. For reference, these schemes are often called “biodiversity offsets”, which sounds about right.

Such a plan might create habitat somewhere that matches the habitat destroyed by the renewable energy project, but this would require destroying existing habitat at the offset site. For example, creating woodland by destroying grassland. Or vice versa, bulldozing forests to create grasslands. This may even mean destroying agricultural land.

Obviously this is nonsense. It is a form of indulgence, meaning payment for a sin, in this case the sin of destroying habitat. Because solar and wind energy will certainly destroy the habitats they rely on.

Offshore wind has actually been proposed and the situation will get worse. Suppose a 100-square-mile offshore wind array destroys a fishery. There is no way to create an equivalent fishery elsewhere. Fisheries are discovered, not made.

The potential for such offshore wind offsets isn't limited to the fishing industry, either. Wind turbines are expected to create wake effects that reduce the productivity of downward ocean feeding grounds. This consumption can adversely affect the entire local food chain. We cannot simply go elsewhere to increase productivity.

Note that floating wind is worse in this regard. A series of giant floating turbines would require a vast network of underwater mooring lines. The net may simply trap larger marine animals, rendering their habitats uninhabitable.

This is probably the worst-case scenario when it comes to being unable to offset terrestrial or marine habitat destruction. The case is that of endangered species occupying renewable energy development sites. If their habitat is destroyed by development, people cannot simply move them to other newly prepared sites far away. Nor can one build a remote habitat and expect them to come there.

This makes the devastating impact of drifting winds on endangered species habitat the worst-of-worst-case scenario. In particular, the federal government has recently leased floating wind farms in the Gulf of Maine in Maine and Massachusetts. The bay is designated as critical habitat for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. The loss of vital habitat from floating wind development is irreparable, period.

All in all, the role of habitat destruction caused by so-called renewable energy development is to create the illusion that the destruction is acceptable. Like indulgences, sin has been paid for, but only on paper.

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