Speaker
Description
The spread of renewable energy sources (RES) represents nowadays a main goal both at European and at national level, being “decarbonization” one of the key solutions to counterbalance climate change. However, the effective balance between global concern for climate change and local attention to landscape quality may give rise to several conflicts (Stremke and Schöbel, 2018). The current push towards energy transition is opening new questions, mainly related to the need of balancing the positive environmental impacts arising from the spread of the renewable energy sources and the territorial and landscape transformations that such a spread entails (Greco and Crosta, 2023). RES can be considered, indeed, one of the major driving forces of recent landscape transformations (Ferrario, 2019).
In Italy in 2023, energy production from renewable sources amounted to almost 40% of the total amount. In line with the European (2018/2001/UE) and national (Integrated National Plan for Energy and Climate) strategies for 2030 on energy transition, the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security issued in 2024 a Decree for the distribution among the Italian regions of the national target for an additional power of energy from renewable sources to be achieved by 2030. The Decree also established the criteria for identifying unsuitable areas, leaving the regions with the task of identifying suitable areas, maximizing the achievement of the assigned objectives in terms of energy production from renewable sources. This has triggered a heated debate both on the topic of energy landscapes and their impacts on landscapes, especially on rural landscapes, and on the conflicts between state regulations and regional planning in the field of energy and landscape.
Hence, starting from the need of effectively balancing landscape safeguard and the spread of RES, this contribution explores the role of regions, and namely of the Ragional Landscape Plans, in regulating the birth and spread of the new energy landscapes and that one they should assume in the light of the expected sharp spreading of the RES. In detail, starting from some emblematic case studies and focusing on photovoltaic and agrivoltaic systems, which risk compromising the landscape identity of numerous Italian agricultural landscapes, the contribution aims at providing guidelines capable to support Landscape Plans in promoting a better integration between energy and agricultural landscapes. Protecting rural landscape does not require, in fact, only constraints addressed to widen the so-called unsuitable areas but, above all, the capacity to overcome a mere technical design of RES (Toledo and Scognamiglio, 2021) to a sustainable landscape design, capable of improving both the compatibility between energy systems and the peculiarities of the heterogeneous rural contexts in which they are located, and the social acceptance of RES.
References
References
Ferrario, V. (2019). Il paesaggio come strumento. Il caso delle energie rinnovabili. Ri-Vista. Research for Landscape Architecture, 16(2), 34–51. https://doi.org/10.13128/RV-24893
Greco I., Cresta A. (2023). Transizione energetica e trasformazioni territoriali: processi ed impatti sul paesaggio in Italia. In Varotto M., Rabbiosi C., Cisani M. (eds.) Oggetti, merci, Beni. L’impronta materiale del movimento nello spazio, Atti del XXXIII Congresso Geografico Italiano “Geografie in movimento”, Vol. 2.
Stremke S. and Schöbel, S. (2018). Research through design for energy transition: two case studies in Germany and The Netherlands. In Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, Vol. 8 No. 1, 2019
pp. 16-33. DOI 10.1108/SASBE-02-2018-0010
Toledo, C., Scognamiglio, A. (2021). A. Agrivoltaic Systems Design and Assessment: A Critical Review, and a Descriptive Model towards a Sustainable Landscape Vision (Three-Dimensional Agrivoltaic Patterns). Sustainability 2021, 13, 6871. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13126871
| Keywords | renewable energy sources; rural landscapes; landscape planning; |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
