Beyond carbon: Why renewable energy must become a nature story

The global conversation around renewable energy is changing. Alongside reducing emissions, wind and solar have become essential to economic competitiveness, affordable power, and energy security. Rapid growth in artificial intelligence, data centers, and electrification are driving unprecedented demand for electricity, accelerating investment in renewable energy and the infrastructure needed to support future growth.

The question now is not whether more renewable energy will be bult, but how we should build it. This question matters because the energy transition is one of the largest land-use transformations in modern history.

Modern renewable energy projects operate at an extraordinary scale. Gigawatt PV projects cover thousands of hectares, and large wind projects have been developed across a wide range of terrestrial and marine environments. Transmission networks and expanding distribution networks add additional layers of infrastructure.

These projects generate clean electricity but can also, if not developed responsibly, have significant negative impacts on nature. Discussions about the environmental performance of renewable energy projects have focused on avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating these impacts. But there is an opportunity to broaden the conversation beyond mitigation. Renewable energy projects are long-term infrastructure assets that remain in operation for decades, giving developers, operators and investors a unique opportunity to influence how landscapes are managed over time. The real opportunity lies not only in minimizing harm, but in designing projects that deliver clean energy while enhancing the resilience and intrinsic value of the environments they inhabit.

Projects can enhance ecosystems and integrate renewables with other land uses. Jack’s Solar Garden in the United States provides a scalable model for co-locating agriculture and solar energy infrastructure to create microclimates that benefit the vegetation or animals beneath and around them.

Artificial intelligence, remote sensing, and automated monitoring are transforming how renewable energy projects manage nature. Wildlife movement, habitat conditions, and environmental performance can now be monitored at a scale and level of detail impossible only a few years ago. Offshore wind developers such as RWE, Iberdrola, Orsted, and Vattenfall now assess wildlife risks and guide siting decisions for birds, bats, and marine mammals with far greater precision. This creates opportunities for more adaptive and proactive approaches to environmental management. Rather than relying exclusively on periodic studies or static management plans, projects can increasingly use data-driven systems to inform decisions, respond to changing conditions, and continuously improve performance over time. Masdar's Infinity Power responded to emerging risks to fruit bats at one wind project by using thermal imaging and machine learning to identify high-risk movement corridors and inform adaptive management.

Perhaps most importantly, lessons learned from existing projects can be embedded in the siting and design of the next generation of developments, rather than introducing them as mitigation. AI-powered camera systems at Masdar's Zarafshan Wind Farm are capturing millions of bird flight paths to support modelling that will inform future projects and significantly reduce risks to bird populations.

Delivering these outcomes at scale will also require innovation in finance. Just as financial mechanisms accelerated the energy transformation by directing capital to renewable energy, sustainability- and nature-linked financing can incentivize projects that deliver benefits beyond clean energy generation. As investors place greater emphasis on nature-related risks and opportunities, financial markets are increasingly recognizing the value of approaches that strengthen environmental resilience.

This approach should not be viewed as a trade-off with the pace of the energy transformation. The world needs more renewable energy, fast and at a competitive cost. The question is whether the expansion of renewable energy can also strengthen nature and society.

The renewable energy sector has already transformed how the world produces and consumes energy. Its next opportunity is to demonstrate that the energy transformation can also contribute to healthier ecosystems and more resilient landscapes. The future of renewable energy will be measured not only by the clean electricity it generates, but by the positive outcomes it creates for nature.