Biodiversity Best Management Practices

Challenge

Pollinators are a key component of our ecosystems and an important component for US food production. Renewable energy facilities can replace diverse meadows with monocultures of turf grasses with low ecological importance.  Eden Renewables have long incorporated biologically diverse communities into their European projects. Full acceptance of these practices here in the US often met with reservation due to cost and maintenance issues. The challenge was to develop portfolio-wide common sense best management practices (BMPs) to enhance biodiversity at solar farms that the US market could embrace.

Solution

Working with Eden Renewables since 2018, GZA is helping to adapt Eden’s European biodiversity model to the US market. Development solutions include cost effective biodiversity BMPs, enhanced wildlife and pollinator habitat, and adaptive management specifications for multiple community scale projects totaling over 500 acres. To track BMP success for the projects’ entire (30- year) lifecycle, GZA helped develop easy-to-implement post-construction monitoring protocols.   

Benefit

BMPs proposed for the sites are showing to be cost neutral relative to conventional construction methods and site maintenance practices. They are also providing enhanced biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and potentially reduced maintenance costs.

The GZA team continues to provide educational outreach, wetlands delineation, threatened and endangered species surveys, avian surveys, construction-related services, and post-construction monitoring to Eden Renewables, their consultants, and project owners.