Editor's note: Liu Baocheng, a special commentator for CGTN, is the Dean of the Center for International Business Ethics at the University of International Business and Economics. The article reflects the authors' opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The Science article "China's Solar Expansion Policy Reduces Bird Diversity" makes an important contribution to the debate over renewable-energy development. Using a panel of 2,344 Chinese counties from 2014 to 2023, the authors report that stronger policies promoting photovoltaic (PV) expansion are associated with lower local bird diversity. A one-standard-deviation increase in policy intensity is estimated to reduce the bird biodiversity index by about 2.1%, with substantially stronger effects in wealthier and non-desert regions. The paper links much of this effect to land-use change: Cropland and grassland are converted into developed land, vegetation becomes more homogeneous, and bird diversity declines.

These findings deserve serious attention, not because they establish that solar power is environmentally undesirable, but because they expose a common blind spot in conventional environmental thinking. The energy transition is often discussed through a binary framework in which fossil fuels are classified as environmentally harmful while renewable energy is presumed to be environmentally benign. The paper shows why that distinction is too crude. Low-carbon technologies can still carry land, habitat, mineral, water and infrastructure costs, and those costs vary largely according to where and how a technology is deployed.

The paper is therefore most useful when read not as an indictment of solar energy, but as an argument for more intelligent environmental planning. Its evidence suggests that the key question is not simply whether China should continue expanding PV capacity, but how that expansion can be spatially organized so that decarbonization, energy security and economic development are achieved with the lowest avoidable ecological cost.

The paper's most important contribution: beyond green labels

The paper's discussion of "inferior greening" is especially illuminating. The authors find that PV expansion can increase leaf area while reducing vegetation diversity and bird diversity. That result is a useful warning against equating visible greenness with ecological quality. A landscape can become greener in a narrow physical sense while becoming poorer in habitat variety, species composition and ecological function. Environmental assessment therefore cannot rely on a single indicator such as vegetation coverage, canopy density or carbon absorption. More green is not necessarily better ecology.

This insight reaches beyond photovoltaic development. Afforestation, urban greening, ecological restoration and agricultural modernization can all produce situations in which one environmental indicator improves while another deteriorates. The paper thus encourages a more mature framework: Environmental policy should be judged by multiple outcomes rather than by the moral label attached to the technology or program.

The paper's own findings point toward spatial optimization

The study's heterogeneous results are as important as its average effect. The estimated decline in bird diversity is substantially stronger in non-desert regions, particularly in wealthier areas with more complex habitats. This finding changes the policy problem. The relevant choice is not simply PV development versus biodiversity protection. It is where PV should be built so that the same unit of clean electricity is produced at a lower ecological cost.

That distinction supports a clear planning principle for China: large-scale ground-mounted PV should be concentrated, as far as practicable, in deserts, Gobi areas, degraded land, mining subsidence zones and other low-conflict locations where land competition and habitat disturbance are comparatively limited. These regions often combine abundant solar resources, large contiguous areas and low population density, making them particularly suitable for utility-scale projects.

Such a strategy is particularly feasible in China because the country has developed an extensive ultra-high-voltage (UHV) transmission network under its broader West-to-East Power Transmission strategy, enabling large volumes of electricity generated in the resource-rich western and northern regions to be delivered over long distances to the major demand centers in the east. This infrastructure helps overcome one of the principal geographical constraints on concentrating utility-scale solar generation in remote desert and Gobi regions. In densely populated regions or areas with high ecological and agricultural value, rooftop PV, industrial sites, transport corridors and other already-developed spaces should play a larger role.

This is not an argument that deserts are ecologically empty. Drylands contain distinctive plants, insects, reptiles, mammals and birds, and some recover very slowly once disturbed. The correct principle is therefore not "build in deserts regardless of ecological conditions," but prioritize deserts, Gobi areas and degraded land while excluding biodiversity hotspots, migration corridors, fragile habitats and other sites of high ecological value. Renewable-energy maps should incorporate not only solar irradiation, construction costs and transmission capacity, but also habitat value, water stress, migration routes and ecosystem vulnerability.

The missing counterfactual: ecological cost is only one side of the ledger

From a public-policy perspective, the paper's most important limitation is more fundamental: It identifies an ecological cost without evaluating the corresponding social benefits of PV expansion. That is entirely legitimate for a study focused on biodiversity, but it is not sufficient for deciding whether a society should build more or less solar power.

Solar generation can displace coal and other fossil-fuel generation, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and conventional air pollution, diversify energy supplies, strengthen energy security and reduce dependence on imported fuels. Climate mitigation is itself relevant to biodiversity because climate change threatens habitats and species on a far broader geographical scale. A local ecological cost therefore cannot be interpreted in isolation from the environmental and social damage avoided elsewhere.

The correct counterfactual is not a solar farm on one side and an untouched natural world on the other. The realistic comparison is among alternative ways of satisfying energy demand, each of which carries a footprint. Coal requires mining, transport and combustion; oil and gas require extraction and pipeline networks; hydropower alters rivers and inundates land; nuclear power requires mining, plants, cooling systems and waste management; wind power requires foundations and grid connections. The fact that one technology has an ecological cost tells us very little until we know the costs of the alternatives.

If a solar project produces a measurable local decline in bird diversity but displaces an energy source that causes greater climatic pollution and ecological damage over its life cycle, rejecting the solar project may increase rather than reduce total environmental harm. Conversely, if the same electricity can be produced on rooftops or degraded land at modest additional cost, then destroying a biologically rich habitat would be difficult to justify. The policy problem is therefore comparative, not absolute.

A rational assessment should place biodiversity effects alongside carbon reduction, avoided air pollution, energy security, land opportunity costs, transmission requirements, local economic benefits, ecological irreversibility and the availability of alternative sites. This is a utilitarian approach in the serious sense of the term: not "economic growth at any cost," but an attempt to count all significant benefits and harms, including ecological values that markets often fail to price. Biodiversity deserves substantial weight in such decisions, but weight is not the same as an automatic veto.

What the paper should inspire in Chinese PV policy

Seen in this light, the paper will encourage China to shift from simple capacity expansion to cautious, spatially optimized expansion. As the scale of PV deployment increases, the geography and quality of new capacity become as important as the quantity.

A rational hierarchy would place large centralized projects first in deserts, Gobi areas, degraded land, former mining areas and other sites with relatively low ecological and agricultural opportunity costs, while subjecting biodiversity hotspots, wetlands, migration corridors, ecologically rich grasslands and prime agricultural land to much stricter thresholds. In regions where land is scarce or ecological value is high, distributed PV on rooftops, factories, parking structures, transport infrastructure and other built environments should receive greater priority.

Environmental assessment should also move upstream. Biodiversity should be considered before a site is effectively chosen, not merely evaluated after project design is already advanced. The objective is to identify conflicts early, compare alternative locations, redesign projects where necessary and monitor ecological effects throughout construction and operation. Such an approach turns biodiversity evidence from a reason for paralysis into a tool for better planning.

The appropriate objective is therefore neither to maximize solar capacity regardless of ecology nor to maximize biodiversity preservation regardless of energy and human needs. It is to maximize the combined social value of clean energy, climate mitigation, energy security, economic development and ecological conservation. The paper's heterogeneous findings are valuable precisely because they help make that optimization more concrete.

Conclusion: development, nature and rational choice

Human civilization has never advanced without altering nature; the task of rational policy is not to eliminate all ecological disturbance, which is impossible, but to distinguish necessary and beneficial transformation from avoidable and excessive destruction.

The history of development makes this plain. The Aswan High Dam brought electricity, irrigation and flood control while transforming the ecology of the Nile. Highways connect cities and expand commerce while fragmenting habitats and disturbing wildlife migration. Reservoirs secure water supplies and generate electricity while inundating terrestrial ecosystems and obstructing fish movement. Modern agriculture feeds billions while representing one of the largest transformations of natural habitats in human history. Renewable energy belongs to the same world of unavoidable trade-offs.

The existence of an ecological consequence is therefore not, by itself, an argument against an activity. The decisive questions are whether the benefit is sufficiently important, whether the ecological cost is proportionate, whether less damaging alternatives exist, and whether the remaining damage can be avoided, reduced, restored or compensated. That is the standard by which solar projects should be judged as well.

The enduring contribution of "China's Solar Expansion Policy Reduces Bird Diversity" is therefore not that it gives society a reason to retreat from solar power. It gives policymakers a reason to abandon simplistic environmentalism. Solar power is not ecologically innocent, but neither is the energy system it replaces. The appropriate response to evidence of biodiversity loss is better siting, stronger ecological safeguards and more comprehensive cost-benefit analysis.

A traditional Chinese expression – "to give up eating for fear of choking" – captures the danger of allowing the existence of risk to become an argument against necessary action. Choking is a genuine risk of eating; the rational response is to reduce that risk, not to stop eating. Likewise, evidence that PV development can damage biodiversity in particular places should make the energy transition smarter, not stop it.

The mature environmental question is not whether humanity should alter nature – it inevitably will – but whether we can choose the place, scale and form of that alteration so that necessary development produces the greatest overall benefit with the least avoidable ecological harm.

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