Environment
Tackling the nature crisis must go hand in hand with tackling climate change.
Across the UK, our wind projects are involved in a variety of projects to improve biodiversity and protect wildlife.
Restoration
Working with partners, many of our wind farms are home to restoration projects - focused on improving onsite biodiversity.
From peatland restoration to hedgerow planting, bat and bird monitoring, the environmental work at an onshore wind farm does not end once built. It carries on during the operational life of the project.
Research
As well as physical works onsite, we also invest in research projects - particularly where there needs to be more evidence or research to better understand the impacts need to be considered, and what restoration techniques might work best.
Community projects
As well as the wind farm's environmental work, local communities are also embracing the opportunities from community funds to delivery their own environmental improvements.
Peatland Restoration
Peatland restoration at landscape scale is happening in South Wales - aiming to restore a forest to bog at Pen y Cymoedd Wind Farm.
As well as restoring the peatland, the funding has helped to leverage more than £3 million in funding for peatland work in Wales.
How do birds avoid turbines?
Seabirds deliberately avoid wind turbine rotor blades offshore – that is the main finding of a new study that mapped the flightpaths of thousands of birds around wind turbines in the North Sea.
Most importantly, during two years of monitoring using cameras and radar, not a single bird was recorded colliding with a rotor blade.
A rare and threatened mammal species
Without conservation support, it is likely that the beautiful and once common Water Vole will become extinct in Wales in the near future.
Funding from the Pen y Cymoedd Community Fund over the next three years will enable essential research on Water Vole populations living in the uplands of Glamorgan, now thought to be one of the most important regions for the species in Wales.
Find out more here.
Across Vattenfall
For us, biodiversity is a key issue for many new projects and operations, but we also invest heavily in long-term biodiversity research and we conduct many voluntary biodiversity projects to enhance local biodiversity values.