Page - 20 - in options, Volume winter 2015/2016

20 options + winter 2015/2016 www.iiasa.ac.at R enewable energy is often sold as being in harmony with nature: wind turbines or solar panels providing a backdrop to fields of yellow sunflowers, blue rivers, and emerald forests. But renewable energy projects are not without environmental impact. Solar panels use land that may have otherwise have been left for wildlife or farmed. Bioenergy comes primarily from trees, which can lead to deforestation of vulnerable habitats like tropical rainforests and alpine and boreal forests. It might also use land that could otherwise produce food. Wind power turbines stretch hundreds of feet high, altering skylines and potentially injuring birds. And hydropower means dams, which change river flows, streambeds, and vegetation, with impacts on the fish and other wildlife. “There is a disconnect between the image of renewable energy and impacts that occur in the environment. When you add renewable energy, you change the landscape,” says Christoph Walzer of the University of Vienna. Walzer is the leader of the international recharge.green project, which relied on IIASA modeling to explore potential trade-offs between renewable energy development and other, less easily quantified values—such as biodiversity, air  and water quality, and landscape beauty—in the Alps, which sprawl across seven European countries. The recharge.green project, which concluded in summer 2015, aimed to find sustainable solutions for energy planning in the Alps and provide a blueprint for regions around the world tackling similar issues. A holistic view “Only a healthy mix of all different kinds of renewable energy technologies— tailor-made for the respective situation and location—can bring maximum benefits across sectors, for climate change mitigation, energy substitution, and ecosystems services,” says IIASA Ecosystems Services and Management Program Deputy Director Florian Kraxner, who led the IIASA contribution to the recharge.green project, using the model BeWhere to integrate and optimize wind, solar, hydro, and biomass power potentials. For the project, they developed a set of around 150 scenarios which show a whole range of possible development pathways. IIASA researchers originally developed BeWhere as a global model to compare the costs, benefits, and trade-offs of bioenergy energy production and identify ideal locations for bioenergy plants. Over the years they have developed new methodologies to address a mix of renewable energy types, to consider protected areas such as national parks, and to refine the model for specific countries and regions. In Indonesia, for  example, Kraxner and colleagues are now using BeWhere as a tool to address the conflict between producing bioenergy and preserving tropical forests. “Deforestation not only leads to biodiversity loss, but also has a global impact on climate change, as tropical forests act as a major sink for carbon dioxide,” explains IIASA researcher Sylvain  Leduc, who leads the development of the BeWhere model. The Expanding renewable energy on a global scale also means tackling trade-offs and competition for land use, and dealing with widely varying public perceptions of the issue renewableenergy