Planning and Settlement Conditions for the Development of Renewable Energy Sources in Poland: Conclusions for Local and Regional Policy

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of geographical-settlement and legal-planning conditions for the development of Poland’s distributed generation. The choice of this country is important and interesting due to the highly dispersed settlement, which may be a factor stimulating the development of this type of energy systems. For this reason, the analysis can be a model for other countries and regions, indicating ways to analyze and evaluate settlement and planning conditions for the development of renewable and distributed energy. At the same time, Poland is struggling with a severe crisis of spatial planning. By analysing these opportunities and threats, empirical analyses try to indicate regularities in this respect in Poland’s regions in a detailed approach to communes and detailed legal and planning conditions. The conclusions emphasise the usefulness of distributed generation development for peripheral and sparsely populated areas of Europe and other parts of the world and appropriate directions of changes in spatial development law.

Boosting the Potential for GeoDesign: Digitalisation of the System of Spatial Planning as a Trigger for Smart Rural Development

“…In the context of the diffusion of innovation that digitalisation represents, a matter of major significance is a specific settlement structure that in turn arises out of the locations of rural areas vis-à-vis a main city (Łódź in the case of this region), as well as a relatively evenly spread network of smaller towns. In this centrally located region of Poland, it is possible to find examples of all the country's types of rural settlement in terms of village size and distribution, whose distribution across the country is seen to be zoned [45]. In the broader context, Poland can be treated as an interesting example of a country whose historical conditioning has ensured a system of spatial planning entirely shaped anew over a period of only three decades to date.…”

Local Spatial Plans as Determinants of Household Investment in Renewable Energy: Case Studies from Selected Polish and European Communes

“…Sharing this view, the authors drew attention to the thematic scope of practical urban planning and noticed a gap in the research at the local level of planning. It can be observed that a considerable interest of researchers, resulting in numerous publications, are either very general issues, in the scale of national, regional and local policies [33,34,36], or very detailed [37][38][39][40]. The latter are most often collections of practical principles for designing urban structures and individual buildings or analyses of building regulations and their relationships with the subject of renewable energy.…”

Spatial Planning Response to the Challenges of Climate Change Adaptation: An Analysis of Selected Instruments and Good Practices in Europe

“…Ultimately, the differences lie in the degree of implementation of the defined goals and objectives. Countries in the Central European family have more barriers and difficulties [57][58][59]. All of this does not make comparisons impossible; on the contrary, it makes these comparisons more necessary and relevant.…”

“…Collectively, therefore, a distinction was made between those issues that are recognized in the academic discussion of spatial planning systems in each country and those that are translated into institutional solutions. In each case, the identified and country-specific issue is the result of in-depth reflection by each author [59][60][61][62]. The authors do not exclude discussions on the importance of particular climate issues in their national systems.…”