Thrive was recently asked to speak at an event hosted by The Grantham Institute, bringing people together from across sectors to explore how businesses depend on and impact nature. And once again it reminded us of the need for continued, collective transformation if we’re to protect the UK’s biodiversity into the future.  

Biodiversity is everyone’s business 

Biodiversity is intrinsically linked with climate change – a challenge that is more widely acknowledged. That’s because biodiversity acts as the Earth’s natural defence system, with our oceans, forests, wetlands, swamps and other ecosystems helping to neutralise carbon emissions. In fact, research by The Nature Conservancy found that nature-based solutions will provide up to 37% of the emission reductions needed by 2030 to keep global temperature increases under 2°C, potentially saving an estimated 11.3 billion tons of CO2e from being released into the atmosphere. This includes everything from building green roofs, using plants to absorb rainwater and cool buildings, to encouraging beavers to build dams to help stop flooding. 

From a business perspective, nature loss significantly disrupts supply chains, while also exposing companies to severe regulatory and reputational risk. Enhancing biodiversity should therefore be a top priority for companies looking to remain resilient, profitable and – quite frankly – do the right thing in a changing world. 

The opportunities in renewable energy 

We talk a lot about biodiversity net gain (BNG), which is a mandatory planning framework in England that requires developers to ‘leave the natural environment in a measurably better state than beforehand’. 10% BNG is the base line but there’s a real opportunity to go above and beyond this, for example we encourage creativity when working with ecologists – like creating an adjacent nature garden at our Bristol battery project. There are also opportunities to improve public access to the ecosystems close to sites – at Whitelaw Brae in Scotland, we’re planting thousands of native trees and establishing a new network of paths that will form part of the new River Tweed walking trail.  

Actively engaging with and promoting a circular economy can also protect against nature loss. There’s a growing opportunity for low carbon and recycled steel in development projects, while focus should also be given to how technologies like wind turbines are maintained – such as repurposing materials that have been historically hard to refurbish. For example, at our Sigurd turbine in Orkney we worked with a Scottish company called Reblade to repurpose the blades into EV charging points and bus shelters. This effectively reduces our waste related risks whilst also reducing supply chain related risks for other organisations.    

How we approach nature and biodiversity when building new clean energy projects  

As a renewable energy investment company, the risk we think about most is the potential impact to habitats and species during the construction and operational phases of a project. We mitigate any impact through extensive ecological surveys, which inform what we build and where. We also develop an ongoing biodiversity management plan for each site with specific targets – committed to implementing at least 10% biodiversity net gain while identifying any additional voluntary, site-specific enhancements that could be made.  

Due to the nature of our work, we also need to think about how we influence the supply chain. Thrive does thorough due diligence on suppliers and their products, but it’s important that we continue using our voice to advocate for greater transparency and standards within the industry. One thing we’re particularly proud of is feeding into the development of the Solar Stewardship Initiative ESG standard, which is now being used to assess solar manufacturers. The standard includes requirements for responsible biodiversity management and going forward we can see which manufacturing facilities have been assessed against this standard. Although there’s much more that can and should be done, if buyers like us demand products that protect and enhance nature, suppliers will have no choice but to adapt.