The increasing entry of the energy subject in spatial planning policies: new visions for energy landscapes

Abstract

The energy topic is of great concern to our society, because of the increasing tensions of fossil resources supply and emission of greenhouse's gas to the atmosphere resulting in climate change. The landscapes we live in are transforming and becoming increasingly complex in their relationship to energy, combining functions related to energy production from renewable sources, reduction of energy consumption as well as the optimization of energy flows (Stremke et al., 2022)

Under the impulsion of these emission reductions and climate mitigation strategies, we can observe an evolution of the European and national directives and laws progressively increasing the place and importance of energy in spatial planning policies (Lopez et al., 2019). These transformations have also shaped new connections between energy and landscape, where landscape, increasingly entering the spatial planning systems (e.g. Alur law in France), goes beyond the preservation of exceptional landscape and in the direction of a more operational and extended concept of ordinary landscape resulting from nature and human actions (Council of Europe 2000). The spatial planning documents participate in changes and the evolution of landscapes (Labat and Donadieu, 2013) and they are developing new visions for future energy landscapes, which call for new energy spatial representations and new professional expertise and data.

The research explores and compares the spatial planning system in France and the Netherlands, through scales (from national to municipal) enabling to follow the evolution of two different planning cultures, as they incorporate new relationships between energy and landscape. Both nations are committed to renewable production and reduction of energy consumption goals but with differences in their spatial planning approaches, also resulting from different dimensions and geographical characteristics, allowing to get broader insights.  

Results show that in both nations, even if there is an increasing compulsory demand to include energy in the planning instruments, its connection to landscape differs greatly according to the scale of the planning instrument (e.g. national, regional, municipal) and it remains mostly associated with the renewable energy technology implementation. Nevertheless, in the Dutch context, with the progressive entry into force of the Environmental act [Omgevingswet], could be observed a connection between reduction of energy consumption and landscape. Indeed even if renewable energy technologies are visible in landscape energy savings measures remains one of the major challenges for the years to come, requiring a profound restructuring on how to plan, design and inhabit our territories, cities and their landscapes.