Abstract
Climate change measures pose various challenges: how can we simultaneously preserve biodiversity, maintain the landscape, and secure the energy supply? One example of such tradeoffs can be illustrated by the upcoming vote on the Federal Act on a Secure Electricity Supply from Renewable Energy Sources. In order to scientifically assess the issues in question, a group of scientists with diverse backgrounds in an interdisciplinary project across six institutions of the ETH domain, named SPEED2ZERO, have analysed the challenges, opportunities and conflicting goals between climate protection, biodiversity conservation, energy security and landscape preservation. These key messages are a summary of the insights to support decision-making:
Key messages:
- Switzerland must decarbonise its energy sector more rapidly to meet its climate targets and protect biodiversity.
- The state of biodiversity is concerning. In Switzerland, the drivers of biodiversity loss so far are mainly not energy-related. However, if climate change remains unaddressed, it is expected to become a main driver of biodiversity loss. Climate change is also increasingly putting landscapes under threat. Thus, a major motivation to mitigate climate change is to address the resulting biodiversity loss and impacts on the landscape.
- Switzerland plans to move away from fossil fuels mainly through electrification, e.g., of heating and mobility. Switzerland aims to meet this increased electricity demand by expanding renewable electricity production by investing primarily in solar photovoltaic and expanding hydropower capacity. These dominant sources will be complemented with other technologies like wind, waste-to-energy (with carbon capture and storage) and power plants that run on biomass, synthetic gases, and green hydrogen.
- All new infrastructure, including renewable energy infrastructure, is not without negative impacts, and tradeoffs are inevitable. The choice of renewable technologies and–perhaps more importantly–their location have direct consequences on biodiversity and landscape, but these can be minimised.
- Change is inevitable: doing nothing does not mean that nothing will change. Rather, doing nothing means inevitable changes will be less predictable and probably less desirable. Therefore, Switzerland needs to make conscious changes today, while it still has some levers to steer change in a desirable direction.
- Negative impacts on biodiversity can be minimised by following four guiding principles: The minimum extent principle, connectivity, complementarity, and sustainability.
- The current discussions about the impact of new energy infrastructure on biodiversity are important. However, it should be emphasised that such installations are not, and most likely never will be, the main cause of biodiversity loss. To address biodiversity loss in general, Switzerland should also discuss and address its other drivers.