Nature+Energy

Nature+Energy develops new ways of accounting for the value of nature on onshore wind farms. Their activities include developing a Natural Capital Accounting methodology, environmental monitoring systems for the measurement of biodiversity on onshore wind farms and supporting measures to build human capacity in natural capital accounting.

 

Highlights

• Nature+Energy’s Natural Capital Accounting methodology is a tool to integrate nature into decision-making in a structured way for the onshore wind energy sector
• They aim to maximise the positive impacts of wind farms on biodiversity and ecosystem service provision while mitigating negative effects

 

About the practice

Nature+Energy is tailoring existing methods in Natural Capital Accounting specifically for use in the wind farm context to provide a standardised methodology on wind farms.

They have also designed a new smart environmental monitoring system for onshore wind farms, established the first industry-wide risk register of natural capital assets, developed the first industry-wide prioritisation protocol, and are developing a web-based decision-support tool for optimising natural capital management.

Nature+Energy hopes to catalyse the employment of new, innovative tools that revolutionise how we monitor biodiversity at wind farms and increase social acceptance of the wind energy industry in Ireland.

Nature +, The Trinity Centre for Biodiversity and Sustainable Nature-based solutions, is a multidisciplinary team of researchers based in Trinity College Dublin. Nature+Energy is funded by MaREI (Making Ireland a global leader in Energy, Climate, and Marine Research & Innovation), a consortium of Irish renewable energy companies and Wind Energy Ireland.