by D. Wojick, Dec 28, 2024 in WUWT

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A bad idea is emerging in the “renewables” world, namely that projects can buy their way out of destroying natural habitats. The wind and solar projects still destroy the natural habitats they are built on but they fund a magic wand that somehow supposedly creates new compensating habitat someplace else. Not really.

The fallacy here is that every acre in America already has a habitat. You can change an acre’s habitat from one form to another but not create one. It is a zero sum game.

There is a long standing, highly specialized development offset program that helps make the point. This is wetlands protection under section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Wetlands are deemed to be so special that filling one in for development can be offset by creating one someplace else.

But if you convert dry land to wetland you have destroyed the dry land habitat. So the amount of habitat destruction is not reduced, just the amount of wetland destruction.

The supposed renewables habitat destruction offset does nothing like the 404 program. The renewables developer simply pays to have habitat created someplace else which is impossible. For reference these programs are often called Biodiversity Offsetting which sounds nice.

Such a program might create habitat somewhere that matches that destroyed by the renewables project but that requires destroying the present habitat of the offset site. For example creating a woodland by destroying a grassland. Or vice versa, bulldozing a forest to create a grassland. This might even mean destroying farmland.

Clearly this is nonsense. It is a form of indulgences, which means paying for sin, in this case the sin of habitat destruction. Because solar and wind certainly destroy the habitat they are developed on.

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