Energy policy: on all territorial levels

Abstract

Global, regional and local energy systems are changing: centralised power grids, based on multi-megawatt generation plants are shifting to decentralised, polycentric systems, where the end user may become also a producer of electricity. Even farmers became part of the energy system as producers, processing agricultural by-products to generate bio-fuels. Local communities are planning investments in wind farms, photovoltaic parks and micro-hydro-power stations.

This raises the question of energy policy governance: Should it be centralised-hierarchical as it still is in many countries, and used to be characteristic everywhere, or is there a need for switching to a multi-level governance approach? There are participative and collaborative patterns of action emerging on the ground in local communities, city regions and neighbourhoods.

Unfortunately, the spatial planning discipline only partly recognised the importance of energy issues. As a consequence some references on energy policy and its spatial implication in a series of ESPON reports are collected in this study. This is the context of the present paper which focuses on identifying the possible outcomes of integrating energy issues into spatial planning practice. Most of the results seem to be useful in relation to all types of energy generation. The results show that spatial planning is a suitable field where energy planning can find its role and context, due to its large experience in participative, collaborative planning. Spatial planning can gain additional social acceptance by integrating energy and renewable energy issues in its discourse. Environment, cultural heritage and regional capital have already been seen as major topics to be discussed during the planning process. Concerns about energy generation and distribution should be included.