Territorial Fragmentation and Renewable Energy Source Plants: Which Relationship?

Abstract

Renewable Energy Sources (RES) are part of the solution to tackle the global problems of climate change and carbon emissions. Programs and policies at different levels are continuing to promote new RES farms, posing a relevant challenge to regional planners and administrators: how to manage landscape transformation and territorial fragmentation to find a really effective sustainable arrangement for these kinds of technologies? Most effects induced by RES (land-use change, land take, diminishing aesthetic values, loss of habitat quality), without a doubt, depend on the location and the spatial pattern of the plants, the relative distance between them, the extension of secondary infrastructures and their technical characteristics. This work takes part in the debate, originating from the need to establish a monitoring system for this kind of new territorial transformation and discusses the implementation of a sprinkling fragmentation index (SPX) in order to assess the current regional settlement structure of RES farms. Our case study concerns the Basilicata region (in Southern Italy), a very low-density area which over the last decade has undergone a relevant increase in the installation of RES technologies, not supported by an effective planning framework. The evolution of the regional energy system has been strongly influenced both by incentive policies and by (weak) urban and territorial planning policies. This approach could be a valuable contribution both in identifying a fragmentation threshold beyond which the expected negative impacts outweigh the benefits, and in providing a useful procedure for the management of future installations.RES-related impacts already analyzed in recent scientific literature [5][6][7][8][9] are: change in land use, land take, natural habitat fragmentation, aesthetic impacts and micro-climate alteration.RES development is growing rapidly [10] and such a condition is one of the main causes of the lack of integration between energy planning (that in the Italian experience has been promoted without a clear analysis of the spatial dimension of the phenomena) and the urban and territorial planning system, traditionally unsuitable to be adapted in the short run to include arising instances that derive from new territorial transformation trends [11,12].At the moment, this type of transformation is regulated in a fragmented and sectorial way, with consequences that at a local level, risk being completely neglected and obscured by the global need to tackle climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.Such an issue highlights the need for an integrated territorial monitoring system allowing decision makers to provide effective policy making and governance of a territorial transformation able to demonstrate the sustainability of the results from the dual perspective of both global needs and preservation of local values.This work fits into the debate by testing the sprinkling index (SPX) [13], which has already been successful in representing the territorial fragmentation thanks to a di...

Modeling the Determinants of Urban Fragmentation and Compaction Phenomena in the Province of Matera (Basilicata Region - Italy)

“…The results show that the probability of transformation of the territory is more related to processes of urban fragmentation. In the case study analyzed but, more generally, in the whole Basilicata’s regional territory, urban fragmentation is the main dynamics of transformation and, in recent years it has also been caused by other components of the settlement system such as renewable energy plants [ 15 , 27 ] and oil wells [ 16 ]. It is crucial to analyze and model urban transformation dynamics as they have a significant impact on the quality of the landscape, the supply of ecosystem services [ 28 – 30 ] and the costs to the population of transforming the city in an unsustainable way [ 31 , 32 ].…”

Geovisualization for Energy Planning

“…In order to improve energy efficiency, urban transformations could be monitored and checked any possible overlay between different instruments able to produce impacts and consequences to territory, in a uniform framework [ 18 – 21 ].…”

Analyzing the Driving Factors of Urban Transformation in the Province of Potenza (Basilicata Region-Italy)

“…The results of this study show that the likelihood of land change will generate more fragmentation processes. In the case analyzed but, more generally, in the Basilicata region, fragmentation has also been caused, in recent years, by other components of the settlement system such as renewable energy installations [ 19 , 35 ] and oil wells [ 20 ]. Urban transformations have a significant impact on the quality of the landscape, the ecosystem services provisioning [ 36 – 38 ] and the costs to the population of transforming the city in no sustainable way [ 39 , 40 ].…”

“…The case study analyzed is the territory of the province of Potenza, in the Basilicata region (southern Italy) where, as demonstrated by previous studies [ 9 , 19 , 20 ], the urban transformations from the 1950s to the present day have occurred on the basis of urban sprinkling rules. Therefore, on the basis of the sprinkling index the processes of fragmentation and compaction on the territory of the province of Potenza have been analyzed.…”