A modeling framework for biodiversity assessment in renewable energy development: A case study on European bats and wind turbines

Combining renewable energy planning and biodiversity conservation is urgently needed to address the interconnected climate change and biodiversity loss crisis and meet the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals 7,13, and 15. However, in many countries such as France, current strategies to limit the negative effects of renewable energy on biodiversity still hold major limitations during the planning process that could be overcome with modeling approaches. Here we propose a new modeling-based framework which aims to determine potential threats posed by projects to biodiversity. By capitalizing on large-scale standardized citizen science biodiversity data to create biodiversity benchmarks, this approach aims to better inform the Ecological Impact Assessment (EIA) process at different stages pre- and post-project construction. We demonstrate the practical application of the framework using bats and onshore wind energy development in France as a case study. We reveal that current approaches in renewable energy planning in France failed to identify sites of biodiversity significance with >90 % of wind turbines approved for construction to be placed in sites of high significance for bats. The risks posed by future wind turbines to bats concern all taxa (all protected in the EU), including species with higher collision risks. We highlight how the proposed modeling-based framework could contribute to a more objective evaluation of pre- and post-construction impacts on biodiversity and become a prevalent component of the EIA process. Its implementation could promote a more biodiversity-friendly approach to renewable energy planning, aligning with the Global Biodiversity Framework's target of halting biodiversity loss by 2030.