I have spoken to a few people in the past weeks that have highlighted that there is both a climate crisis and biodiversity crisis currently at play. Addressing carbon emissions at the cost of biodiversity is not a pathway that should be pursued. Organisations like Teruel Existe, Alianza Energia y Territoria (ALIENTE – The Energy and Land Alliance) are Spanish citizen movements who use the slogan “Renovables si, pero no asi” (“Renewables yes, but not like this”). People in these movements generally support better environmental outcomes and decarbonisation of the economy, but feel that development is happening in an unchecked fashion, which is having negative impacts on wildlife and biodiversity and overall landscape amenity, including for the tourism sector.
These organisations sometime criticise ‘mainstream’ environmentalist organisations like Greenpeace for failing to oppose renewable projects that might have adverse local ecological impacts. They also note, however, that many of those environmental justice organisations are based in the cities and, as such, are less able or willing to represent rural issues.
In places like Teruel, which has historically been relatively undeveloped, and therefore maintains significant natural areas, organisations like Teruel Existe and ALIENTE advocate for projects to be sited in previously disturbed areas, and closer to load centres, rather than in those which are currently undeveloped. They also believe though, that sparsely populated areas like Teruel make for attractive project sites because there are less people to both be impacted, but also less people to protest. As with many other regional jurisdictions, they also feel aggrieved that their region is bearing the impacts of project development to decarbonise urban areas in other parts of the country. This is not dissimilar to issues resulting in project pushback in Australia.
Environmental issues relating to the roll-out of large-scale low-carbon energy projects are somewhat exacerbated by the need to decarbonise the economy rapidly. Policies and incentives designed to support the rapid build-out of renewable energy have resulted in some negative impacts, lower levels of oversight or more limited planning processes. What is very difficult to quantify and balance however is the long-term environmental damage resulting from climate change that a rapid decarbonisation approach may avoid. In the same way, it is hard to draw a line on how much protection and consultation is the right amount, versus the time it will take to ensure those protections and undertake that consultation. Broadly, those I have spoken to would reference the Californian Environmental Quality Act and suggest it favours protection over speed, and that the Spanish regulatory regime skews in the other direction – but it is much harder to make a call on where the balance should actually be.