Analysis And Mapping of Trade-Offs Between Renewable Energy and Ecosystem Services

IRENES is an Interreg project that aims at bridging renewable energy and ecosystem-services related concepts and at integrating them into energy-related policies at the regional level. One of the specific obejctives of the project is to explore the trade-offs between key ecosystem services (ES) and the provisioning of energy from renewable resources (RES). Thus, RES represent a subset of ES, and their provisioning may trigger negative impacts on the provisioning of other ES (for example, in the case of solar farms installation, the agricultural production might be affected). Hence, to pursue proper decarbonization it is key to understand our territories, identify where RES provisioning is promising, and where it would compromise the provisioning of goods and services that are key to the economies and the communities. If not, the reduction of emission will not underpin any sustainable development and there will be monetary, social and environmental costs that we cannot afford anymore. Under this perspective, the work here presented shows mapping exercises of trade-off between RES and other ES undertaken by the consortium for the 5 contexts interested by the project. Namely, East Anglia (UK), Lower Saxony (Germany), Estonia, Veneto Region (Italy), Romania. The adopted approach aimed at taking advantage of existing available data and methods. Thus, in line with the Interreg principle, the work aims at bridging theory and practice, and capitalizing on existing knowledge. Overall, the integration of methods and data were used to build, through GIS, trade off analysis for one (or a set of) RES, based on the interests declared by the Managing Authorities. ES investigated also differ by case and reflect highlights from meetings with stakeholders. Overall, it is possible to say that, even though for each of the five contexts data and methods used are different, the approaches and the processes draft a common path. To conclude this brief introduction, the maps reported in this volume represent a fundamental part of the IRENES Interreg project, as first the methodology for producing the maps were chosen based on the needs of the Managing Authorities that emerged thanks to the dialogue of the consortium with the local stakeholders and second, the maps produced were delivered to the Managing Authorities as technical basis for decision making and to support the design of new coming energy-related policy instruments and measures.