Solar Wildlife & Ecosystem Database

Solar energy will play a critical role in decarbonizing the United States’ electrical grid and the growth in installed capacity of large-scale photovoltaic solar energy will continue to increase in the coming decades. A clear understanding of the risks and benefits of solar energy to natural resources is needed to ensure the process of siting and permitting solar energy projects minimizes impacts and maximizes benefits.

Collaboration through data-sharing will rapidly increase our understand of solar-natural resources challenges and opportunities. Rather than starting the environmental review of each new solar project from a place of complete uncertainty, we can pool information from numerous solar projects across regions for review and synthesis.

A New Data-Sharing Infrastructure

The Solar Wildlife and Ecosystem Database, developed by REWI, is a community resource that helps solar developers, owners, and operators turn their biodiversity and ecological data into a strategic resource. This database helps reduce permitting risk and improve decision making by pooling costly biodiversity and ecological data from large-scale solar facilities, while protecting data confidentiality.

Biodiversity and ecological data collected during permitting, construction, and operations represent a significant investment. Too often, these data are siloed, underused, or lost over time. The REWI Solar Wildlife and Ecosystem Database ensures that existing datasets are preserved, protected, and—when appropriate—used in aggregated analyses that support smarter siting, mitigation, and long-term project performance.

For more information, please contact REWI Information Science Lead, Ryan Butryn (rbutryn@rewi.org).

PDF not displaying? Download here.

This project was originally funded through an award from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (DE-EE0010381) to design and construct the SolSource Database. The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office supports early-stage research and development to improve the affordability, reliability, and domestic benefit of solar technologies on the grid. Learn more at energy.gov/solar-office.