Land use, habitat and RE: Enel Green Power steps up for sustainability

Renewable energy is one of the keys to decarbonizing our industries, cities and economies. Removing fossil fuels from our energy production and consumption cycle on the scale needed to combat climate change means vast numbers of new solar and wind plants must be built, increasing pressure on land and habitat around the world. This pressure must be mitigated if our planet as we know it is to survive. It is not enough for these new plants to generate clean energy — they must be made sustainable in more ways than one, for example by integrating environmental stewardship into the way they are built and run. Corporate buyers can play a key role by privileging developers that use sustainability criteria in their projects, according to a Salesforce report titled More Than a Megawatt: Embedding Social and Environmental Impact in the Renewable Energy Procurement Process. “Corporate electricity buyers are uniquely positioned to drive the market toward procuring renewable electricity from low-impact areas. By integrating criteria for land and habitat into electricity procurement, buyers can advance their energy, climate, and conservation goals, while also reducing business risks,” the report says. Enel Green Power has taken a leadership role in this effort by adopting alternative approaches to the way it builds its utility-scale power plants, for example by integrating the preservation of topsoil and of local biodiversity at the design and construction stage of any new development. The traditional approach Traditionally, after identifying a site for a new plant, utility-scale solar developers remove most of the topsoil and vegetation before installing the photovoltaic panels, then covering the ground with gravel or grass. This results in facilities that generate clean power — but at the expense of the surrounding environment, which has been stripped of its topsoil and vegetation. And in a world where biodiversity is decreasing at an alarming rate, this approach is no longer advisable. Scientists have warned that at current rates of soil destruction, within 50 years we will suffer not only serious damage to public health due to degraded food and loss of essential trace minerals, but we will literally no longer have enough arable topsoil to feed ourselves. By 2030, utility-scale solar installations could cover almost two million acres of land in the United States, monopolizing it solely for energy production, according to researchers at the Innovative Site Preparation and Impact Reductions on the Environment (InSPIRE) project. Accordingly, the Salesforce report recommends incentivizing contracts with generation and storage projects in the built environment and on modified lands, while disincentivizing contracts with projects in critical or natural habitats. Additionally, for utility-scale solar generation on agricultural lands, corporate buyers should prioritize solar projects on impaired farmland and deprioritize solar projects that would convert prime or important farmland. For example, as part of its commitment to sustainable development, Enel Green Power is focusing on regenerative agriculture, which restores topsoil and preserves biodiversity, and agrivoltaics, or the practice of growing crops under the shade of solar panels to help offset the impacts of extreme weather events, reduce water consumption, increase food yields, and limit the negative effects of heat on the solar panels. The alternative approach Low-impact solar development is a change in paradigm from the traditional approach to installing utility-scale solar power plants, because it preserves topsoil: the panels are installed, then surrounded by plantings of native species and other beneficial vegetation whose deep roots retain more water than grass and gravel during heavy storms and periods of drought. Native plants help retain topsoil and improve soil health over time. If properly selected, they also require less maintenance. Perhaps most importantly, native and flowering vegetation provides a habitat for pollinators and other beneficial insects that can improve yields at nearby farms. A successful experience was at the Enel Green Power Aurora site in Minnesota, where the company worked in partnership with InSPIRE to plant flowers, herbs and native plants around the solar panels. This attracted pollinators such as bumblebees, honey bees, butterflies, and moths. “Low-impact solar development, including native and pollinator-friendly vegetation practices, provides numerous, stacked benefits in the form of ecosystem services, operational efficiency, and positive stakeholder relations,” said Marcus Krembs, director of sustainability at Enel Green Power North America, which is hosting three InSPIRE test sites in Minnesota. Regenerative agriculture at Azure Sky Enel Green Power is also applying this alternative approach at Azure Sky, a solar-plus-storage site located west of the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas’ Haskell County. The facility, which is under construction and is slated to become operational by summer 2021, will have capacity to produce over 586 GWh a year. These will feed the grid and also charge the battery located at the plant, avoiding the emission of the equivalent of over 386,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year. Azure Sky is being built according to Enel Green Power’s Sustainable Construction Site model, which integrates regenerative agriculture and circular economy principles into the design, supply, construction, functioning and end-of-life management of both the photovoltaic panels and the battery systems. Regenerative agriculture focuses on topsoil regeneration, increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing ecosystem services, supporting biosequestration, increasing resilience to climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil. Accordingly, the 284-MW photovoltaic plant — composed of some 700,000 bifacial photovoltaic panels combined with an 81 MW battery — will be surrounded with plantings that use a mix of native seeds to create a high-quality habitat for monarch butterflies, honey bees and other native pollinators. American retailer The Home Depot, which has placed sustainability among the three core principles of its 2020 corporate responsibility strategy, has signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) to buy 75 MW of electricity produced by Azure Sky. The case for agrivoltaics Following the successful experience at Aurora, Enel Green Power started a series of experimental projects at solar power plants in Spain, Italy and Greece in partnership with universities and research institutes, industrial companies, engineering firms, non-profits and startups. The idea is to assess the benefits of agrivoltaics in terms of operational efficiency and maintenance, as well as the creation of shared value with local communities. The ultimate objective is to increase the sustainability of utility-scale photovoltaic plants by promoting a diversified use of land, safeguarding local biodiversity and improving ecosystem services at the same time. In the initial planning phase, nine demonstration sites in Europe were launched simultaneously (two each in Greece and Italy, five in Spain), and testing began in January 2021. The project entails running tests in parallel on different types of solar plants, both on greenfield sites (previously not used for farming) and Futur-e sites (decommissioned power plants that are being repurposed). They include planting aromatic herbs such as cilantro, lavender and flowers to attract pollinators, installing nests to improve the habitat of some bird species, growing forage for animal feed, and raising chickens at the solar plant. At the Totana, Valdecaballeros, Augusto and Las Corchas photovoltaic plants in Spain, the project involves planting a number of vegetables such as artichokes, broccoli, zucchinis, peppers, and pitaya, a tropical fruit that is rich in iron and vitamin E. In particular, specific species of herbs and legumes that can improve the habitat for birds were sown at the site in Totana. “These experiments will produce a huge amount of data that will be compiled in an Atlas to support future decisions, enabling new plants to select the best farming solutions and related business models based on the solar technology, the local climate and the analyses of the social, economic and environmental context,” explained Miriam Di Blasi, Head of Environment and Impacts Mitigation Innovation at Enel Green Power. Enel Green Power, a part of the Enel Group, is dedicated to developing and managing renewables around the world, with operations in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. A global leader in the clean energy sector with managed capacity of approximately 49 GW and a generation mix that includes hydroelectric, wind, geothermal and solar energy, Enel Green Power is at the cutting edge of the integration of innovative technologies and sustainability strategies into renewable plants.

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Land use, habitat and RE: Enel Green Power steps up for sustainability

Land use, habitat and RE: Enel Green Power steps up for sustainability

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