Towards new renewable energy developments in Switzerland that preserve biodiversity

The project highlights key challenges at the nexus of renewable energy (RE) development, biodiversity protection, and climate change mitigation. It aims primarily at identifying the potential conflict between the pressure to rapidly expand RE, specifically in sensitive Alpine regions where ecosystems are still the most intact, and the essential goal of increasing biodiversity protection, which is currently insufficient while key to mitigating climate change. As such, striking a balance between these two critical environmental imperatives poses a significant challenge.

The ways to ensure energy security during the transition to RE is particularly key, considering the risk of maintaining the dependency on imported fossil fuels in the coming years - and therefore a business-as-usual model in terms of carbon emissions - if the implementation of large-scale renewable energy infrastructure is too slow. The project also addresses the difficulty of identifying suitable locations for renewable energy installations while ensuring minimal impact on biodiversity, to guarantee that the net pressure on ecosystems does not increase, and that rare intact habitats remain protected and in good ecological condition. These challenges require careful national prioritisation of landscape usage that also takes into account spatial prioritisation of biodiversity conservation, thus coordinating efforts between cantons, which will also constitute an important dimension of the project.

The project will bring together the Swiss climate, biodiversity, and RE scientific communities. Interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration is carefully considered by the project team when inviting participants, emphasising the importance of bridging gaps between various scientific domains and institutions. Lastly, the project will highlight challenges in influencing public policy and engaging diverse stakeholders, in particular through a final scientists-stakeholders workshop.

This project falls within the following Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and specific targets (T) mentioned here: