Biodiversity impacts of different net zero carbon pathways for the UK energy system. (4480)

Many countries and companies have announced targets to reach net zero carbon at some point in the next few decades in a bid to mitigate the potentially devastating impact of climate change. The UK, for example, aims to achieve net zero by 2050. Whilst decarbonisation of the energy system is expected to play a key role in the UK's net zero strategy, the potential impact of this energy transformation on biodiversity (also in crisis) is poorly understood.

Many low carbon energy technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels can have negative impacts on biodiversity over their entire life cycle from raw material production, through their use, to their end of life. For example, mining of metals used in a wide range of renewable energy and battery technologies such as rare earth, cobalt, lithium and copper are projected to grow significantly to meet the demand. Dedicated energy crops might need to be grown on a large scale to provide the feedstock for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), which is considered as one of the most viable negative emission technologies in many net zero carbon pathways. Both mining and growing bioenergy crops can cause significant biodiversity impact through direct land use change. The use phase for renewables such as wind turbines, solar panels and tidal power can also have negative ecological and hence biodiversity impacts, largely depending on the location of deployment.

This PhD project will improve understanding of the scale of the biodiversity impacts of different net zero pathways for the UK energy system by: 1) quantifying potential stressors on biodiversity (e.g., land use change) induced by different energy technologies using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method; 2) identifying the likely locations of these stressors at different life cycle stages; and 3) assessing the spatially explicit global and national biodiversity footprint under different net zero pathways. The outputs from the project will inform policy makers to avoid problem shifting and better manage the synergies and trade-offs between climate and biodiversity goals.