Can solar farms boost biodiversity?

Pollinator-friendly solar farms, infrastructure at risk, and an inspiring "forest school"

GOOD NEWS

Many years ago, I was surprised to learn about the connection between solar farms and biodiversity through Rob Davis, formerly with Fresh Energy, a Minnesota-based organization that runs the Center for Pollinators in Energy. What’s the link?

When solar farms are carefully planned and seeded with native plants that pollinators love, they can help tackle the biodiversity crisis at the same time as the climate crisis. Well-designed and managed solar farms can create habitats for honeybees, bumblebees, and other pollinators. And when pollinators increase in number, nearby cropland benefits too!

That’s not all: solar panels provide shade and redistribute rainfall, creating their own microclimates. There are also sustainable ways to keep grass from overtaking these sites: sheep and goats are used at many solar farms around the country to “mow” the grasses back.

Curious about how pollinator-friendly a solar project is? There’s a tool for that-- the Pollinator-Friendly Solar Scorecard, currently used in at least fifteen U.S. states. The Nature Conservancy has also developed a handy guide to pollinator-friendly solar. And a few years ago, Rob designed a miniature solar pollinator farm model and submitted it to Lego! Although, he didn’t get the 10,000 votes needed for Lego to adopt it then, I bet he could now if he tried again. What do you think?

NOT-SO-GOOD NEWS

I’ve been part of the Infrastructure Climate Network for over a decade. It’s an international collaboration between climate scientists and infrastructure engineers, focused on assessing how our transportation systems – roads, bridges, culverts, runways and more – are vulnerable to climate change.

The problem we have is this: we’ve been planning for our future based on the past. We continue to design and build our cities and our infrastructure based on the assumption of a stable climate, but that assumption no longer holds. As the planet warms, our infrastructure is becoming more vulnerable: and new research confirms this.

In particular, climate stress is making bridges age faster. Extreme temperatures are causing their pavement to buckle and steel structures to fail. “We have a bridge crisis that is specifically tied to extreme weather events,” says Paul Chinowsky, a professor of civil engineering. “It’s getting so hot that the pieces that hold the concrete and steel, those bridges can literally fall apart like Tinkertoys.”

In the U.S., nearly a billion dollars of the bipartisan infrastructure law is being used to help strengthen roads, bridges, and transportation networks. But much more will be needed as heat waves increase in duration and frequency and the number of billion-dollar weather disasters ticks up year after year.

Around the world, climate extremes are putting billions of people and trillions of dollars of infrastructure at risk. As I explain here, “We have entire cities and transportation hubs that were all built for climate that no longer exists. That’s why we’re seeing terrible things happen.”

INSPIRATION OF THE MONTH

A few years ago, a not-for-profit called Parry Sound Forest School started up near our family cottage in Muskoka, Ontario. Kids spend their days in the woods, learning about nature – catching frogs, climbing trees, whittling wood, and learning about edible plants.

Many of my little nieces and nephews have attended and I’ve heard so much about the amazing things they’ve learned that I wish it had been around when I was young! But I didn’t realize I already had a personal connection to the camp until this summer, when I met Diana, the founder.

Though I’d never met her, Diana recognized me right away. It turns out, she had heard me speak at a church in southern Ontario a few years ago, where I said, “The most important thing we can do about climate change is talk about it.” Inspired by that message, she started the camp to do just that! Isn’t that amazing?

Outdoor programs like this are so important for helping kids to fall in love with nature, and care about climate change. You can learn more about this school on their Instagram. If you’re interested in outdoor programs for kids, there’s a directory of outdoor schools for North America here and a U.K. forest school list here—or search for one near you!