Environmental Stewardship Report

In keeping with our commitment to responsible clean energy development, Clearway plays a leading role in helping to shape the policies and practices that guide our industry. We collaborate with many of our industry peers on an ongoing basis on initiatives that will facilitate the growth of renewables while also prioritizing environmental conservation.

In 2024, much of this work focused on the development of utility-scale solar projects in California. As a longstanding board member of the Large-scale Solar Association (LSA), we were actively involved in efforts related to species conservation, permitting, and economic benefits. Click on the slides to learn more!

The western burrowing owl was once found throughout California, but in recent decades its population has declined significantly due to habitat fragmentation and loss resulting from human activities.

In 2024, the California Fish and Game Commission voted to move the western burrowing owl to candidacy status under the California Endangered Species Act. Clearway played a leading role in working with other LSA member companies and conservation scientists to develop The Burrowing Owl Conservation Strategy.

The Strategy seeks to provide regulators, subject matter experts, solar developers, and land managers with guidance regarding the siting and operation of solar projects in areas used by burrowing owls. It is also designed to advance the collection of data to benefit ongoing research. The Strategy is intended as a living document that will be updated as new data becomes available.

Clearway joins LSA in its commitment to avoiding and minimizing impacts to burrowing owls during the construction, operation, and decommissioning of utility-scale solar projects and to managing this infrastructure in a way that creates and enhances habitat where possible.

Utility-scale solar projects are subject to extensive and transparent permitting requirements that seek to ensure their development, construction, and operation will not result in net-negative environmental or conservation outcomes. Clearway was instrumental in working with other LSA members to develop a two-part permitting guide for project developers and wildlife regulators, with the goal of facilitating solar project siting and permitting that avoids, minimizes, and/or mitigates major wildlife and habitat conflicts.

The first component is the “California Solar Photovoltaic Energy Environmental Development (SPEED) Guidelines.” These voluntary, California-specific Guidelines were developed by LSA member companies, and seek to facilitate the expansion of responsibly sited utility-scale solar PV projects in California in balance with conservation priorities.

They provide a rigorous, tiered, risk-based evaluation process assessing impacts to wildlife and their habitats, determining potential impacts, and committing to beneficial practices designed to avoid and minimize, and where appropriate, mitigate for resulting adverse impacts. Importantly, these guidelines also represent a commitment to enhancing wildlife habitat within large-scale solar array areas for special-status species that coexist well with solar project operations.

The second component includes a template for an incidental take permit application, which is designed for situations in which there is an expectation that a project could have a negative impact on a plant or animal species that is considered threatened or endangered under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA) or is a candidate for state listing as threatened or endangered.

California’s San Joaquin Valley is a leading US agricultural region, producing more than half of the state’s crops, employing around 340,000 people, and generating $24 billion in annual revenue. However, this agricultural activity relies heavily on irrigation, which has led to concerns about the sustainability of groundwater supplies – and indeed, an estimated 870,000 acres of irrigated farmland may have to be fallowed by 2040 to comply with California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).

Clean energy projects, particularly solar and battery energy storage systems (BESS), have the potential to deliver meaningful employment and income generation for the local economy with minimal to no water usage. In 2024, Clearway supported the commissioning of a technical report to assess the economic impact of expanding the development of solar and BESS projects in the San Joaquin Valley.

The research found that “Solar and BESS resource development is one way to increase opportunities for landowners to generate new income streams on SGMA-impacted lands, diversifying economic activities that could stabilize existing agricultural operations and the larger regional economy in the face of groundwater sustainability.”

Pollinators are an important part of the world’s ecosystems, because they are essential to the reproduction of flowering plants – including many that are essential sources of food for humans. In fact, it’s been estimated that one in every three bites of food we eat exists thanks to animal pollinators like bees, butterflies and moths, birds and bats, and other insects.

That’s why a decline in pollinator populations worldwide is a matter of grave concern. While there are many contributing factors, scientists believe that habitat loss resulting from human activities like development and agriculture, combined with pollution, the widespread use of pesticides, and climate change, are leading causes.

Clean energy projects have the potential to offer a two-part solution to help pollinators. First, they produce abundant, affordable electricity without creating any air or water pollution or contributing to climate change. Second, project sites – particularly solar farms – often offer opportunities to create habitat for pollinators. Early research suggests the increases in local biodiversity achieved by integrating pollinator habitat into solar farms has measurable benefits for crop yields on adjacent farmland.

In keeping with our commitment to environmental stewardship, Clearway works actively to provide pollinator habitat at our projects, with a particular focus on monarch butterflies – including participating in the Monarch Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances, which also benefits bee populations.