Abstract
Environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are commonly used to identify negative effects of onshore wind farm projects on biodiversity and ecosystem services, but in practice they are often hampered by the lack of locally validated data. This reduces the robustness of decision-making, undermines stakeholder trust, and exacerbate local resistance. Methodological inconsistencies between EIAs and strategic environmental assessments (SEAs) further hinder the integration of environmental considerations across scales. In this study, existing life cycle assessment (LCA)–based biodiversity impact methods are extended to spatially quantify both direct and indirect effects of onshore wind energy on ecosystem services. The presented environmental performance indicator (NEP) for wind energy developments allows the consistent integration of impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity. This connects site-specific project impacts to regional-scale assessments within the wider landscape. Using a wind farm project as a case study, the innovative NEP reveals spatially explicit impacts on recreational values through land occupation and disturbance. For impacts on avian diversity, waterfowl was the most vulnerable taxa due to disturbance and barrier effects. Regionalized impact mapping indicated that the planned wind farm had comparatively low avian impacts and moderate ecosystem service impacts relative to alternative sites. Comparison with the existing project EIA showed that the proposed LCA-based approach is consistent and provides a more extensive quantification of biodiversity and ecosystem service impacts. In addition, regionalizing impacts leads to impact benchmarks for comparing projects within the same region, supporting developers in early-phase scoping and improving decision-making to balance trade-offs between environmental impacts and economic revenues.