Reto Spielhofer successfully completed his PhD on «Optimal Swiss Renewable Energy Landscapes»
The goals of Reto’s PhD project were to conduct a physiological laboratory experiment to better understand people’s perception of landscape changes through renewable energy systems, and to show how an evolutionary optimization algorithm can inform policy-makers in leveraging various planning policies to optimize wind energy production.
Whereas renewable energy systems (RES) are very well-accepted at a national scale, at the local scale, renewable energy projects face resistance. Thereby, the perceived visual impacts on landscapes caused by wind, water and solar infrastructure are of major importance. Hence, the major goals of this thesis were (1) to better understand visual perceptions of landscape changes through RES and (2) to integrate these perceptual aspects into national and regional RES planning policies. Major findings are that the perception of RES in different landscapes includes a substantial affective component and people seem to prefer landscapes with RES, they perceive as visually coherent. This means that landscape context, visual qualities and the opportunity for visual and functional embedding of RES must be considered. In order to support planning strategies for RES developments, a novel approach was developed combining optimization algorithms with scenario approaches. This proved an effective tool to identify robust sites for RES developments considering various planning constraints and goals. The use of Pareto optimal locations for RES helps to communicate the spatial effects of planning policies and the impacts of different weights. In the final synthesis, the perceptual aspects of the RES-induced landscape changes and the RES planning policies were mutually considered. Overall, the developed approaches can contribute to building trust in the planning process and foster acceptance of RES projects.