A new laboratory launched jointly by Wind Denmark and Dansk Energi, Denmark’s two largest energy organisations, aims to improve the coexistence of wind turbines, photovoltaic panels and nature through research and testing of new solutions that ensure both biodiversity and green transition. The Coexistence Laboratory, CO-EX Lab, will focus on finding solutions through research and data collection from relevant green energy projects.
“We need to install much more wind and solar if we are to meet our climate targets. A lot more. And right now, it’s going almost backwards. That’s why we’re taking this initiative now, because we’re convinced that many green projects are being slowed down or stopped unnecessarily. Biodiversity and green energy plants can and should live side by side, but we need data and real development of solutions – this initiative will give us that.” – said Kristine van het Erve Grunnet, Managing Director of Renewable Energy at Danish Energy.
The ambition is to create a Danish showcase for the responsible green transition on the basis of research on how nature and green energy can better interact through the provision of necessary new data and thereby enhancing knowledge in the field. The main focus of the laboratory will be to support and document when renewable energy installations and nature or wildlife can coexist – and may even contribute positively to biodiversity, in terms of short-term and long-term impacts, and in which cases there are decidedly negative impacts. In addition, the project aims to examine how the regulatory framework for nature and climate can work better together to tackle nature, biodiversity and climate to be more complementary rather than mutually contradictory.
The company European Energy offered to make the Omø South Offshore Wind Farm available as a test project, where both the construction of the plant and its commissioning will be documented to get better data on the impact of birds in the area, as well as to test existing and new mitigation measures.
Source: Dansk Energi
