This month will see the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties take place in Glasgow, Scotland, with world leaders coming together to tackle the climate crisis. But when it comes to climate change, we know now that we have to stop simply talking the talk - and walk the walk.
Carmel Brennan: “We need to look at how we can make the biodiversity value of wind farm sites even better” “Each wind farm comes with environmental management plans and our job is to implement best practice on those wind farms. Our goal is to protect the biodiversity there and reinstate any of the habitats that were lost during construction – as well as enhancing what is already there over the lifetime of the wind farm.
“Recently we became involved in a research project with Trinity College Dublin on how to develop best practice in biodiversity at our wind farms. Wind energy in Ireland is about 30 years old and it’s at a stage where it is more mature, so we need to look at the results we have so far, and look at how we can make the biodiversity value of these wind farm sites even better.
“We are running out of time; from the biodiversity viewpoint, our environmental strategy is to achieve biodiversity net gain on all our new wind farms by 2025 and look at the wider range of ecosystem benefits they offer. We are at the point now where the next 10 years is going to be critical for both the climate change agenda and the biodiversity agenda. Everybody has to put their shoulder to the wheel and make those changes and influence others around them.
“SSE has 28 wind farms on the island of Ireland that generate more than 700MW of green energy, while Galway Wind Park alone generates 170MW. It was designed and constructed to the highest of environmental standards and we felt it was important to educate not only our colleagues, but also the public, on what we did to achieve that.”