Planning for sustainable development of energy infrastructure: fast – fast simulation tool

Abstract

Energy management has significant impact on planning within local or regional scale. The consequences of the implementation of large-scale renewable energy source involves multifaceted analyses, evaluation of environmental impacts, and the assessment of the scale of limitations or exclusions imposed on potential urbanized structures and arable land. The process of site designation has to acknowledge environmental transformations by inclusion of several key issues, e.g. emissions, hazards for nature and/or inhabitants of urbanized zones, to name the most significant. The parameters of potential development of energy-related infrastructure of facility acquire its local properties -the generic development data require adjustment, which is site specific or area specific. FAST (Fast Simulation Tool) is a simple IT tool aimed at supporting sustainable planning on local or regional level in reference to regional or district scale energy management (among other issues). In its current stage, it is utilized -as a work in progress -in the assessment of wind farm structures located within the area of Poznan agglomeration. This paper discusses the implementation of FAST and its application in two conflicting areas around the agglomeration of Poznan. Keywords: renewable energy planning, spatial planning, sustainability. PLANNING FOR DECISION MAKINGEnergy management has significant impact on planning within local or regional scale. The consequences of the implementation of large-scale facility or power plant, the erection of a wind farm as well as the strategic decision to exploit geothermal resources, among others, involve multifaceted analyses, evaluation of environmental impacts, and the assessment of the scale of limitations or exclusions imposed on potential urbanized structures and arable land. Rarely, this type of development poses no threat to the environment and rarely it does not result in spatial conflicts while both size (or area) of development as well as intensity of the impact cumulatively alter the existing properties of the environment, most often in an irreversible way.Planning manifests the necessity to anticipate the course of civilization related and environmental development. Thus, planning becomes an introductory step towards decision making. The decision-making process in reality, contrary to theoretical assumptions indicating the possibility of doing everything by the book, in majority of cases, particularly of small and medium size developments, is based on limited amount of preliminary data, limited research effort, and above all limited amount of time. Time becomes a crucial factor in encouraging those procedures that are efficient in giving the answer sooner even if the risk of making a mistake is increased (one can refer to post-political reality of democracies -decision making is quite often more the result of election cycle impact than argument based). Proposed information technology application displays the necessity to adjust research-based methodologies to those real conditions witho...

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