Marina Frolova - Böcker

In response to climate change and limited fossil fuels, renewable energy is being heavily promoted throughout Europe. Despite general support for green energy, perceived landscape change and loss of landscape quality have featured heavily in opposition campaigns.The COST Action "Renewable Energy and Landscape Quality" (RELY) systematically investigated the nexus between renewable energy production and landscape quality. Its aim was to analyze how landscape protection and renewable energy deployment can be reconciled to contribute to the sustainable transformation of energy systems.This book compiles guidelines for assessing landscape suitability for, and vulnerability to, renewable energy projects together with a toolbox for landscape-aware public participation in planning. It furthermore elaborates a multilingual glossary of terms related to landscape and energy.

This book provides timely, multidisciplinary cross-national comparison of the institutional and social processes through which renewable energy landscapes have emerged in Southern Europe. On the basis of case studies in these countries, it analyzes the way in which and the extent to which the development of renewable energies has affected landscape forms and whether or not it has contributed to a reformulation of landscape practices and values in these countries. Landscape is conceived broadly, as a material, social, political and historical process embedded into the local realm, going beyond aesthetic.The case studies analyze renewable energy landscapes in Southern Europe on different political and geographical scales and compare different types of renewable energy such as wind, hydro, solar and biomass power. The contributors are leading experts from Spain, France, Italy and Portugal. The book is intended for researchers, graduate students and professionals interested in geography, landscape and planning.