Enabling a Nature-Positive Energy Transition

Why It Matters

Embedding nature‑positive principles in renewable deployment ensures climate goals are met without sacrificing biodiversity, delivering economic and social co‑benefits that sustain long‑term energy and environmental resilience.

Key Takeaways

• Solar PV expansion can coexist with agriculture using proper planning
• Mitigation hierarchy (avoid, minimize, restore, offset) reduces biodiversity impacts
• Large solar farms alter microclimate, lowering wind speed and ground temperature
• Co‑utilization of modified lands, rooftops, and floating panels boosts efficiency
• Policy, incentives, and community engagement essential for nature‑positive renewables

Summary

The IRENA webinar highlighted a nature‑positive approach to the global energy transition, focusing on large‑scale solar PV and the broader implications for biodiversity and local ecosystems. Speakers presented findings from recent IRENA‑Arena reports that examine both the environmental impacts and the co‑benefits of renewable projects.

Key insights include the rapid growth of solar capacity—2,383 GW installed by 2025, accounting for 74% of new renewables—and the importance of careful land‑use planning to avoid competition with agriculture. A mitigation hierarchy—avoid, minimize, restore, offset—can prevent most adverse effects, while studies show solar farms can reduce surface wind speeds by 20‑40% and alter temperature and moisture regimes, sometimes yielding ecosystem benefits such as enhanced agrivoltaic yields and desertification control.

Notable examples cited were wind‑speed reductions observed in China’s Anhui province and Oregon, the EU’s Renewable Acceleration Areas that speed permitting, and innovative site selections like rooftop solar, former landfill installations, and floating PV on reservoirs in China. These cases illustrate how strategic siting and co‑utilization of modified lands can deliver both energy and environmental gains.

The overarching implication is that scaling renewables to meet Paris‑aligned targets requires integrated policies, financial incentives, and active community participation. By embedding nature‑positive principles into permitting, design, and operation, governments and industry can unlock co‑benefits, reduce land‑use conflicts, and safeguard biodiversity while accelerating the clean‑energy transition.

Original Description

Renewable energy plays a vital role in mitigating climate change, but the deployment of solar, wind, and grid infrastructure can interact with surrounding ecosystems in complex ways. Understanding these impacts. and how to minimise them, is essential to ensure the energy transition works with nature, not against it.

Two key reports are examined, covering renewable energy's local environmental impacts and nature-positive siting and permitting principles — highlighting measures, policies, and best practices for developers, investors, and policymakers to reduce negative impacts, restore degraded land, and enable a nature-positive energy transition.

Read Local Environmental Impacts of Large-scale Solar PV Plants here: https://www.irena.org/Publications/2026/Jan/Local-environmental-effects-and-benefits-of-large-scale-solar-PV-plant

Read Nature-positive Energy Principles: Environmental Siting and Permitting of Solar, Wind and Grid Infrastructure here: https://coalition.irena.org/Publications

For more on the Insights Webinar Series: https://www.irena.org/Events/2020/Jun/IRENA-Insights