Concerns for potential wildlife impacts resulting from land-based and offshore wind energy have created challenges for wind project development. Research is not always adequately supported, results are neither always readily accessible nor are they satisfactorily disseminated, and so decisions are often made based on the best available information, which may be missing key findings. The potential for high impacts to avian and bat species and marine mammals have been used by wind project opponents to stop, downsize, or severely delay project development. The global nature of the wind industry-combined with the understanding that many affected species cross-national boundaries, and in many cases migrate between continents-also points to the need to collaborate on an international level. The International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Technology Collaborative Programs facilitates coordination on key research issues. IEA Wind Task 34-WREN: Working Together to Resolve Environmental Effects of Wind Energy-is a collaborative forum to share lessons gained from field research and modeling, including management methods, wildlife monitoring methods, best practices, study results, and successful approaches to mitigating impacts and addressing the cumulative effects of wind energy on wildlife. WREN develops products such as white papers, fact sheets, and short science summaries, and is involved in a number of activities including hosting a webinar series and outreach and information dissemination through participation in meetings, workshops, and conferences to increase and expand the knowledge base pertaining to wildlife challenges at wind energy facilities. This information is available on WREN Hub, hosted on the Tethys website.

Sweden are one of the countries that experience growing installation volumes of Solar photovoltaic. Traditionally, in Sweden, most of the solar photovoltaic investments and policy incentives have focused on distributed photovoltaic systems. Yet, despite limited policy incentives and pessimistic forecasts, an increasing number of centralized photovoltaic parks have been commissioned and plans for substantial new capacities are communicated. Hence, the current paper investigates why. Detailed information about the underlying costs of six PV parks commissioned in2019 and 2020 in Sweden were obtained by in-depth interviews with stakeholders and were analysed through levelized cost of electricity calculations. We conclude that the unsubsidised levelized cost of electricity ranged from 27.37 to 49.39 V/MWh, with an average of 40.79 V/MWh. This is lower than what are assessed for photovoltaic parks in some recent Swedish electricity system scenario studies. The main reason for the discrepancy is identified to be the assumed interest rates in the system scenario studies and the actual cost of capital experienced in the market. Comparing the levelized cost of electricity values with the market value of solar photovoltaic electricity on the spot market show that four of the six studied parks would be profitable under a merchant business model with the last years spot prices. If the downward price trend continues, Sweden may face an unexpected expansion of photovoltaic parks.

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