Territorial Fragmentation and Renewable Energy Source Plants: Which Relationship?

Lucia Saganeiti,Angela Pilogallo,Giuseppe Faruolo,Beniamino Murgante,Francesco Scorza

doi:10.3390/su12051828

Lucia Saganeiti, Angela Pilogallo + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su12051828

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Feb 29, 2020
Citations: 43	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Basilicata

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.

Highlights

Following global challenges on climate change and the relevant framework of international agreements on CO2 emission reduction, a widespread local policy-making strategy was promoted at different scales
If we focus on Renewable Energy Sources (RES) plants intended as a new component of territorial settlements and, compare their subsequent anthropic pressure on the metrics already adopted to measure urban growth, we clearly realize how RES development has to be considered a critical concern for current urban and territorial planning
Considering the changes in the spatial distribution of the fragmentation degree between 2008 and 2017, and in looking at the entire settlement system consisting of both building and RES plants, a contraction of ‘non-urbanized’ and ‘non-fragmented’ classes mainly in favor of ‘low’ and ‘medium-low’ fragmentation classes can be observed

Summary

Introduction

Following global challenges on climate change and the relevant framework of international agreements on CO2 emission reduction, a widespread local policy-making strategy was promoted at different scales. 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.

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