3.3 Ecological degradation
The
productive and constructive engineering may
interfere
with native ecosystems through the excavation, cover and occupation of
land,
destruction
of vegetation, and consumption of energy and resource.
Although
wind and solar energy are clean energy sources, those have also caused
inescapable environmental issues in practical applications. The
construction of clean energy destroyed forests (Figure 6) and grasslands
(Figure 2 and Figure 3b), and reshaped the landforms (Figure 3a),
resulting in a lack of
nutrients
suitable for plant growth on the new surface, and thus leading to
vegetation recovery is difficult. Once the land has been desertification
(Figure 3), the treatment of land desertification needs to take more
time and money to restore vegetation in mobile dunes and stabilize sand
fields. Besides, the construction of clean energy also caused
environmental pollution, such as photovoltaic projects.
Wastewater
and exhaust gas were generated during the production of monocrystalline
silicon which is the main material of solar cell panels. Besides, once
the solar cell is retired, itself becomes untreatable waste (Tammaro et
al., 2016). Moreover, if endless solar panels are planted as crops in
the fields,
the
right to enjoy the sunshine of plants and land is deprived, which may
lead to the negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functions.
For example, Xu et al. (2019) reported that to avoid the negative impact
of the photovoltaic project on the land, the so-called ”ecological
photovoltaic” was implemented by planting vegetables and raising rabbits
in the remaining space of photovoltaic farm station, which ultimately
failed due to the lack of sunlight. Besides, wind power as another clean
energy also brought negative effects on the environment. It was reported
that the noise, electromagnetic radiation, and moving shadows generated
by the wind power generator near the Trionyx Sinensis farms
affected the reproduction and growth of the Trionyx Sinensis ,
resulting in a loss of RMB 1.63 million (Bai, 2019).