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Safeguarding rural landscapes in the new era of energy transition to a low carbon future
Energy Research & Social Science 37 (2018) 191–197
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Perspectives
Safeguarding rural landscapes in the new era of energy transition to a low carbon future
MARK
Michael Jefferson ESCP Europe Business School, Research Centre for Energy Management, United Kingdom
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Rural landscapes Renewable energy Intrusions and threats concerns Concerns, and responses required
This paper focuses on threatened future intrusions of energy infrastructure on rural landscapes. In recent years there has been a large outpouring of publications apparently related to “the energy landscape” and “urban energy landscape”. In the author's view this is a misleading use of the word “landscape”. Here the words “rural landscape” refer to rural and countryside, as distinct from town, as they have done in the English language for over 400 years (according to the Oxford English Dictionary). There are many reasons for concern about the future of our rural landscapes due to human initiatives, among which are scarcely constrained developments of onshore wind turbines, ground-mounted solar PV, and “modern” biomass and biofuels. Guidelines and regulations aimed at protection are frequently evaded. Those supposed to apply guidelines and regulations often fail in their duty. Areas supposed to be protected from intrusion by international, national, or local regulations are exploited. A sustainable future requires us to preserve scenic values and protect many rural landscapes. This will require much stricter limits on the location of renewable energy developments in the countryside.
1. Introduction What is to be discussed here is a very different concept of energy landscapes – the mapping of conformations of molecular entities – focussed upon by some physical scientists. Here the focus is on our rural landscapes. This is how the word “landscape” is usually conceived – inland scenery; and rural as distinct from towns and cities. The threat is of an increasing number of energy structures which many people now consider, or will, or should, increasingly consider look out of place and undermine the beauty of our rural landscapes. The cause of this concern is the expectation, signs of which can already be noted in many countries and landscapes, that visually intrusive structures in – and exploitation of – the remaining countryside will escalate as efforts are made to move to a lower carbon world. As the term landscape refers to inland scenery, what follows will not cover offshore wind energy developments, estuarine barrages or tidal ‘lagoons’, wave or tidal stream technologies, although these may be observable from the land. As Patrick Devine-Wright has recognised, how seascapes may be valued as onshore locations is often overlooked in development strategies [1]. Few would term most landscapes around the world as “natural”, for human inroads from deforestation, agriculture, and even much afforestation have altered these landscapes. Most of us, hopefully, are aware of the sometimes gross intrusions on our landscapes of past fires, charcoal burning, shipbuilding, and fossil fuel developments. In some
E-mail addresses: jeff[email protected], mjeff[email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.10.005 Received 2 June 2017; Received in revised form 5 October 2017; Accepted 5 October 2017 2214-6296/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
countries – Brazil and Indonesia among them – the destruction of forests continues, with tragic consequences for the habitats of many rare species and some indigenous people [2,3]. Even in Europe and the USA, as noted later, forests are being cut down for reasons not always honestly admitted. These are matters which have long been noticed and noted down. Martin Pasqualetti, in his chapter in the book: “Sustainable Energy Landscapes” [4], has given a succinct account of the history of the changing landscape. He shows a photograph of a coal mine in Mud, West Virginia, which seems to almost encircle a house – coal mines are legally permitted there to come within 300 feet of a house. He goes on to provide illustrations from oil and oil sands development, power plants – a nuclear plant among them, dams and pumped storage plants, wind turbines, geothermal plants, biogas and solar PV plants. In some ways there is, as so often, not much new in this. But nowadays, and for as long as concern lasts about enhanced near-surface global warming and the availability and affordability of useful energy, there is a high likelihood that intrusive structures will escalate in our landscapes. The visible effects of landscape intrusion vary according to the viewer, their past experience and recollections, their age (apparently), their aspirations (such as living in a “rural idyll”), and the landscape affected. Patrick Devine-Wright has pointed out that the English appear to be more sensitive to their landscapes and intrusion thereon than the Dutch or Germans: the English have greater “place attachment”. He is a
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Spender's poem goes on:
co-author of a paper which concluded several new transmission power lines “have been met with strong public opposition, notably in two of the countries researched in this study – Norway and the UK.” Indeed, the latter paper found: “there were consistently lower levels of acceptance, both generally and locally, in the UK in comparison to the Scandinavian countries” [5–7]. Patrick lives in rural mid-Devon, England. The author also lives in rural England. Those who oppose landscape intrusions (derisorily referred to as a NIMBY – ‘not in my backyard' member) are often likely to be rational and well-informed, as Patrick has pointed out. Maarten Wolsink has stated: “Actually, the combination of generally positive attitudes and oppositional behaviour based on motives related to the ‘backyard' idea are rare” [8–12]. They are not necessarily selfish – adverse criticisms often made by developers and their agents who are seeking to make large amounts of money out of renewable energy developments and the subsidies frequently available thereon. They may well, however, go beyond the claim made by some authors – including Wolsink – that with earlier and improved consultation with local residents such opposition will fade away. For those who truly love their rural landscapes it is not simply a matter of being consulted or cajoled into agreeing on visual intrusions (wind turbines, solar PV systems) or the undermining of sustainable development (much biomass and biofuel development). Inappropriate use, or deliberate misuse, of language is not confined to the NIMBY tag. Expressions such as “wind farms”, “solar farms”, and the recently become fashionable “energy landscape” and even “urban energy landscape” may be regarded as misleading. Onshore wind turbines are more appropriately termed “wind energy developments” (as are offshore ones); solar panels stretching across agricultural land better termed “solar mirrors” or “ground-mounted solar PV”. Seeking to hijack a rural environment by use of the word “farm” should be opposed. Visual or acoustic intrusions on the rural landscape should not be disguised by using a term which suggests merging with the landscape – the reality is that this rarely occurs. Instead we need strict enforcement of the requirement that large areas should be exempt from such intrusions – as indicated by the title of the important contribution in this field: “The Renewable Energy Landscape: Preserving scenic values in our sustainable future.” This book begins with a futuristic account of journeys across the USA in 2030. There is no respite from wind turbines, high-voltage transmission lines, shorn forests, and solar ‘farms’. Even when one reaches the Pacific Ocean a flock of wave buoys will greet you [13].
“But far above and far as sight endures Like whips of anger With lightning's danger There runs the quick perspective of the future.” [26] Such literary and poetic outpourings may be described as part of the “cultural” landscape in some quarters, but it does not seem to be a particularly illuminating or accurate description. Instead, this poem, for most readers, will suggest hostility to pylons on the part of Spender. Yet it has been claimed that this poem attracted “unkind” comments and parody, and for one commentator at least it demonstrated that “the pylon-line resembled a heroic ideal, stalking off over the hills into a clean, rational future.” His official biographer, James Purdon, wrote: German Expressionism inspired his most anthologized poem of the period, ‘The Pylons’, an homage to the National Grid which has all the graphic starkness of a ‘Ufa’ film poster.” [27,28] More recently there has been reference to the need “to promote culturally sustainable landscapes” [29]. This paper is primarily focussed upon afforestation in Tasmania, but it justifiably concludes that “the conceptual framework could be extended to other land use changes and infrastructural installations, particularly land uses that visually or functionally disrupt existing meanings attributed to the rural landscape” . To “installations” visible in the rural landscape in England may be included the beauties of Stone Age forts and barrows, Emperor Hadrian's Wall, Norman castle mounds, medieval churches, fine historic country houses, and thatched cottages huddled together in England, and such equivalents as may exist elsewhere. But over the past 90 years there have been battles over visual intrusion of energy infrastructure, not least electricity pylons and overhead transmission lines. The early arguments were over either bringing electricity supplies speedily and cost-effectively to homes and farms, or bearing the heavy additional costs of burying the lines to avoid visual intrusion. This battle took off seriously in 1928 in England with the Sub-Committee on Electricity of the then called Council for the Preservation of Rural England (still the CPRE but the word Preservation dropped in favour of Protect). It was a battle that was largely lost over the years, although it increased the awareness and sensitivity of the supplying Central Electricity Board [30–33]. Yet even some who claimed not to admire pylons striding across “our intimate countryside”, have also claimed that they do not disfigure the countryside “but can quickly disappear if new research makes them obsolete, and this we should insist on” [34]. Nan Fairbrother, who wrote those words in her book: “New Lives, New Landscapes”, published in 1970, was also the first person to introduce me to the term “urban landscape”, which has caused irritation ever since. This is, of course, a personal perspective and the works of Vanesa Castan Broto on “urban energy landscapes” and of Jessica de Boer and Christian Zuidema on “Towards an integrated energy landscape” published in Urban Design and Planning are among those that have aroused recent interest [35,36]. Rather astonishingly, a recently published “Routledge Research Companion to Energy Geographies” has claimed that there is “an important lacuna in the academic, educational and publicist literature” relating to “an integrated perspective on the relationship between energy and geography” (page 2). Yet on page 5 it is stated: “However, the dominant public issue is their visual presence in the landscape, as identified by several geographers (Pasqualetti et al.). It has continued to grow and evolve in many countries, most recently taking on the mantle of what has come to be called “energy landscapes” (Nadai and van der Horst)” [37–39]. Then on page 135 Martin Pasqualetti rightly states that: “Often energy landscapes are visual affronts to personal aesthetics – such as might occur from the installation of wind farms and transmission pylons.” This statement is somewhat undermined when it is claimed later on the same page that: “in Western countries landscape transformations attracted little attention up to the 1960s when concerns raised by environmental movements started to be recognised by larger publics” [37]. As discussed above, the concerns were of long standing.
2. The landscape, national perceptions and/or traditions, and “culture” Many English people have long been marked out as particularly sensitive to, and often well informed about, the beauty and sensitivity of the rural landscape around them. This is not to claim that their love of the English countryside has been uninfluenced by forces and cultures elsewhere – as far afield as China. Those who have read David Matless’s book: “Landscapes and Englishness” will recognise all this [14]. Those who have works by W. H. Hudson, Richard Jefferies, George Bourne (who also wrote under his real name, George Sturt), H.J. Massingham, Flora Thompson, Denys Watkins-Pritchard ('BB'), and the early works of H.E. Bates on their bookshelves will feel it profoundly, and only a few can be referenced here [15–25]. Edward Abelson’s anthology of John Massingham's writings makes a convenient starting point [15]. Those familiar with this material will empathise with E. M. Forster’s lament in “The Abinger Pageant” (1934) about “arterial roads, by-passes, petrol pumps, and pylons – are these going to be England?” Those who follow poets from William Wordsworth to Stephen Spender writing of the rural landscape will also recognise this, and mull over Spender's “The Pylons”: “Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete That trails black wire Pylons, those pillars Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret.” 192
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lost. Marshland, important for many species – especially birds – can be lost. Also, deliberate efforts can be made by authorities and/or developers to mask spatial, social, and environmental ‘inconvenient truths’ as Viviana Ferrario and Bendetta Castiglioni have illustrated in the context of Italy's Piave River [46]. This, therefore, is by no means the end of the story. Up to 80 million people had been displaced by hydroelectric dams by the year 2000 according to the World Commission on Dams, which proposed various measures to improve decision-making and recognise the rights of, and risks for, all interested parties – including those people directly affected [47]. Yet the dam building and uprooting of people without appropriate recognition and compensation goes on. Opponents of India's over 3000 Narvada Valley large and small dam projects estimate 1.5 million people will be displaced [48]. Some 400,000 people are estimated to be adversely affected by dams proposed on the Omo River in Ethiopia. A further 10,000 are estimated to be displaced by the Bakun dam in Sarawak, Malaysia. The 40 major dams proposed along Brazil’s Tapajos River will drastically upset the lives and livelihoods of four tribal groups (their land will be submerged) and, according to Greenpeace International, risks destroying “the heart of the Amazon” [49]. China’s Three Gorges Dam displaced over 1.3 million people [50]. In almost all disputed cases the people most adversely affected are indigenous, and the claims by developers of the power likely to be produced considerably over-stated. For over twenty years the World Bank has come in for severe criticism for supporting such schemes, overseas aid organisations for encouraging them, and foreign developers (once largely private sector, but nowadays joined by Chinese investment interests) for seeking to make money at the expense of those victimised. The World Bank itself has recognised that the number of people displaced by such schemes has been about 50% higher than planning estimates The human consequences can often be overlooked by those who are focussed upon hydropower’s low carbon emissions and prepared to back powerful international lobbying interests, but the failures to protect the interests of local people and understand their cultures goes back over a century – to Sweden of all countries. The first of a series of hydropower schemes in the picturesque North of Sweden had profound local consequences. As Maria Vedin has put it, even in Sweden there was almost complete ignorance of the Sami reindeer culture, herding routes, the occupations and traditions of local communities around Porjus, a “place which was considered to be more or less uninhabited, especially when seen from the perspective of planners in Stockholm” [51]. Little more than fifty years later, a similar set of processes (or lack of them) was set off by the plan to dam Norway's Kautokeino River with the Alta Dam. The dam was completed in 1987, after nearly two decades of strife in which the adverse impacts on the Sami people there and their reindeer herding were again evident. The authorities in Oslo pushed through the scheme despite opposition from the municipal authorities in Alta and Kautokeino, and from Finland lying just over the national border. Thus was the traditional migration route of over 40,000 reindeer blocked, two important villages submerged, and the important salmon spawning grounds destroyed. What may cause considerable surprise is the fact that in 1974 a newly appointed Minister of Environment, Gro Harlem Brundtland, blocked efforts to conduct environmental studies of the area to be affected, as Oystein Dalland has confirmed . It may well be that by 1982 the Alta case was indeed for Mrs. Brundtland the “special case, sharpening our consciousness of the value of nature, and how this ought to be recognised before any steps are taken that may change the conditions for ever… So, those persons who previously have treated hydro-power schemes without the necessary consideration they deserve ought to have learned once and for all from the Alta case and all its aspects” . But in the wake of the Alta case both Norwegian and Swedish overseas aid and commercial interests acted in the 1990s with “pervasive appraisal optimism” in Laos, Tanzania, and Chile to the benefit of Kvaerner and Vattenfall, among others [51]. A great deal needs to be done to improve initial assessment
Similarly, on page 135, reference is made to “public awareness of energy landscapes started to change with a series of well-publicized events that included … accumulating acid-rain damage to forests in the early 1980s” [37]. So much for the controversy during the 1960s of the damage acid rain was causing to forests and lakes in Scandinavia (from coal-fired electricity generation in Poland, East and West Germany, and the UK) which led to the 1972 Stockholm Conference. But we need to move on from “the cultural landscape”. The main concern as we look forward is the need to avoid rural landscapes being swamped and visually destroyed by renewable energy structures – notably wind turbines, ground-mounted solar PV, and ‘modern’ biomass and biofuel developments. They cannot, of course, be banned altogether. But their positioning has to be carefully considered and severely rationed, taking into account visual intrusion and optimal location for their efficacy. Already guidelines, regulations and incentives abound for renewable energy developments, but they are all too frequently circumvented or changed when deemed inconvenient. Losing valued landscapes extends far beyond losing a view. Another important work in this field has concluded: there is a need for a better integration of aesthetics and environmental psychology into the shaping of sustainable energy landscapes, and this calls for a multidisciplinary approach [40,page 492]. 3. Past and emerging intrusions of energy infrastructure on the rural landscape The deep intrusions of past coal mining on landscapes are familiar to many older people in numerous industrialised countries, and to others who still experience mined and open-cast coal operations in so many countries around the world. Nor have landscapes been immune from the intrusion of oil and gas structures – from exploration and production drilling to refineries, tank ‘farms', and over-ground pipelines; or from electricity generating and nuclear power plants. Electricity pylons ‘striding' across beautiful, and not so beautiful, landscapes have already been mentioned. Below ground too there are legitimate grounds for concern about nuclear waste storage and pollution caused by ‘fracking'. Earth “tremors” have been a focus for concerns about the results of “fracking”, with the rapid increase of “earthquakes” in recent years in parts of the USA (notably Oklahoma and Texas); in western Canada; and in the Bowland area of North-West England. But earth tremors have also been associated with traditional oil and gas production, such as those which have caused extensive damage to properties in the Groningen area of The Netherlands [41]. Even what some would claim is a form of renewable energy – geothermal (although the International Energy Agency, for example, does not) – has caused earth tremors. Deep Geothermal Energy has been cited as the cause of earth tremors on the Greek island of Melos; near Basel in Switzerland; Staufen, Landau and Unterhaching in Germany; Australia's Cooper Basin; and Geysers in California, for example [42–45]. But the main concern of this paper is on the threatened massive expansion of wind, solar, biomass and biofuel developments around a world which is heavily focussed on decarbonising fuel sources, although in some parts of the world hydropower schemes still pose challenges. 4. Hydropower impacts on rural landscapes and rural dwellers Hydropower, and the dams built to retain the vast amounts of water that the relevant planners seek, are an obvious point to start on the relevant technologies likely to be intrusive on the rural landscape and thus requiring careful prior assessment and monitoring during operation. So far as landscapes are concerned, submersion of land upstream can result in decay of plant material and production of methane. The reservoirs themselves can silt up, reducing their capacity and thereby reducing the amount of water that can be used for hydroelectricity. Downstream, riverside forests, grasslands and agricultural land can be 193
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all discussed, albeit briefly [69,pages 170–175]. The significance of local mean wind speeds and the problems of visual intrusion varying with local topography were also highlighted. Most of these adverse criticisms have been rejected by the industry, usually without proper examination, over much of the past 23 years. It was not until June 4th, 2016, that a new CEO of Renewable UK was to say:
of hydropower schemes and their impact on the landscape, the people and occupations directly affected, improve policy and regulatory frameworks, and ensure that these frameworks are rigorously and consistently applied. Over the past twenty-five years there has been a huge surge in the implanting of new energy structures into rural landscapes without taking due account of these basic principles. Wind, solar, biomass and biofuel schemes, provide the most obvious examples.
“We are almost certainly not talking about the possibility of new plants in England. The project economics wouldn't work; the wind speeds don't allow for it.” [70]
5. Intrusions of wind energy developments on rural landscapes
However, Hugh McNeal, the interviewee, ended by saying that “the economics could potentially be better for projects that involved removing small old turbines and building bigger, more powerful replacements on the same site." Repowering is likely to become a bigger issue, and it will be important for those concerned with the impacts of wind turbines on the landscape to push for siting where mean wind speeds are relatively high, turbine heights are kept modest (the official 125 m limit is quite high enough in England and other densely populated countries, for example, rather than up to 200 m as is the case in Sweden, or 165 m in Germany), and close attention is paid to scenic quality and its retention. Malcolm Grimston, in an excellent and insufficiently recognised book, pointed out that, globally, the average capacity factor achieved has been around 23.9% in recent years [71]. It remains closer to 20% for much of the UK, despite some efforts to give a more optimistic impression. Depending on the basis of official calculations, the average in 2016 fell in the range 23.7%–24.2% for onshore UK wind energy developments [72]. A recent survey found 418 of the UK's larger onshore wind energy developments by late 2016 had achieved rolling annual average capacity factors below 20% – 186 in England; 106 in Scotland (a very disappointing figure as mean wind speeds in Scotland are probably the highest in Europe); 101 in Northern Ireland; but encouragingly only 25 in Wales. Ten of these developments recorded recent capacity factors achieved of less than 10% [73]. These figures indicate that almost 30% of the UK's larger onshore wind energy developments failed to achieve a capacity factor of 20%. These figures are surprising because for over 20 years the UK industry organisation (British Wind Energy Association and its successor, Renewable UK) claimed developers should assume achievement of a 30% capacity factor for Planning Applications, and most developers did so. It is vitally important for the future of UK useful energy supplies to focus attention on raising the capacity factors achieved by UK wind energy developments through careful siting which reflects sensitivity to visual intrusion in the landscape as well as mean wind speeds in the locality. The sorts of questions raised by onshore wind energy developments in the UK (and especially English) landscape are mirrored in the USA, France, Germany, The Netherlands, France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, and perhaps other countries. Moving towards a low carbon economy requires precautionary measures backed by sound investments, not clearly sub-optimal ones, to minimise adverse impacts on the landscape. Wind energy developments are potentially the most intrusive form of renewable energy on the landscape. They are also the most likely source of visual intrusion on coastal locations, where many people choose to live, as has been pointed out by Patrick Devine-Wright in a fairly comprehensive survey of wind power edited by Joseph Szarka and four others [74].
Although the use of wind turbines to generate electricity has occurred since the end of the 19th Century, the past thirty years have witnessed a massive expansion in the number of wind turbines in many countries, and a trend towards ever taller ones, with correspondingly greater intrusion on rural landscapes and the lives of rural dwellers. In some respects this is understandable, given the attractions of harnessing wind for electricity output. Unfortunately, many of the resulting developments and subsidies have been sub-optimal in their location and performance. There has been a large volume of publications relating to issues of visual intrusion on rural landscapes, intermittency, capacity factors achieved, proximity to dwellings and transport routes, aerodynamic (or amplitude) modulation, manufacturing conditions, and some of the raw materials used [52]. Ongoing major issues resulting have related to “place attachment” and knowledge of local conditions in rural areas; the importance of careful location in achieving satisfactory capacity factors; potential, and sometimes actual, impacts on rural property prices, sleep patterns and health. On the more positive side, costs of turbines have fallen, capacity factors achieved have tended to rise – both onshore and, especially offshore; and there has been some – though still arguably inadequate – recognition of impacts on property prices and sleep patterns. For those based in the UK there has been an outpouring of relevant information from overseas on the potentially harmful effects of “aerodynamic modulation” on sleep patterns and health caused by undue proximity to wind energy developments – Frits van den Berg, E. Pedersen, K. Persson Waye, and Nina Pierpont are among those listed in a Canadian report: “Understanding the Evidence: Wind Turbine Noise” [53]. Others include Alain Nadai, Godefridus Petrus van den Berg, Dan van der Horst, and Maarten Wolsink [54–58]. Important ‘home-grown' inputs have come from Dick Bowdler and Mike Stigwood on aerodynamic modulation (and the shortcomings of the UK’s criteria for ‘noise' set out in ETSU-R-97); and from Christopher Hanning and Amanda Harry on “Wind Turbines, Noise and Health” (the title of Dr. Harry’s report of February 2007) [59–66]. The issues raised on health impacts are inevitably ‘energy landscape’-related, as they principally impact on rural dwellers – especially those located within 1.5 kilometres of a wind energy development. Similarly, adverse impacts on property values may be considered by some as outside the remit of landscape considerations, but few would consider evidence of (often) a 15% drop in the value of their rural home as trivial. Opposition to onshore and near-shore wind energy developments has been escalating even in countries where there was once a high degree of public acceptance – such as Denmark and Germany – and much of this opposition is founded on visual intrusion on the rural and coastal landscape. It has been stated that in Denmark “growing neighbour resistance is to an increasing degree hindering wind power projects based on large onshore wind turbines.” As long ago as 2013 Der Spiegel reported on “Mutiny in the Land of Wind Turbines” with “local residents up in arms” in picturesque rural locations [67,68]. Many of the issues which have arisen in recent years, and raise concerns for the future, were covered in a World Energy Council study in 1994 [69]. Visual impacts, noise (emphasising the aerodynamic component), bird mortality (already citing US experience as well as that of Tarifa, in Spain), safety and telecommunications interference were
6. Intrusion of solar PV developments on the rural landscape Solar energy will also have an increasing impact on the energy ‘landscape’. Here the central question raised is whether this is a sound investment in areas of relatively low direct and indirect solar insolation. In areas of relatively high solar insolation this issue is less pressing, especially for solar water heating and some other applications. A more general question is whether the availability of subsidies has 194
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7. Intrusion of biomass and biofuel developments on the rural landscape
encouraged, and will encourage, dubious investments. There is no doubt that sunshine falling on the Earth is perhaps as much as sixty times world annual current power consumption. But, as the late David MacKay explained, things are not as simple as that. Not only do levels of direct and indirect solar insolation vary across latitudes and seasons, they also vary sharply during daylight hours. MacKay concluded that “the realistic potential of sunshine is only a little larger, on average, than current consumption” [75]. For example, the UK is not noted for having high direct or indirect levels of solar insolation. London has roughly a 20% greater solar insolation (or flux), at about 110 W/m2, than Edinburgh (about 95 W/ m2); Athens has double the solar insolation (around 190 W/m2) of Edinburgh. Athens has about the same level of solar insolation as Denver, Colorado, but over 30% less than in some locations in Africa and the Pacific. Solar insolation levels can vary ten-fold during the year – from 20 W/m2 in December to 200 W/m2 in July in London. Not surprisingly, capacity factors achieved by solar installations vary greatly depending upon latitude and other locational factors. In Spain they can achieve 23%; in parts of the USA up to around 25%. Yet globally the average capacity factor achieved by solar PV is “just 11.8%” [71]. In the UK average achieved capacity factors have ranged from 9.8% to 11.4% in recent years [72]. The higher figures are more commonly achieved in the South-West of England. Examination of 635 ground-mounted solar PV developments in the UK by the end of 2016 showed 509 achieving a rolling average capacity factor between 10.0% and 12.0% (80% of the total number), with 48 achieving over 12% and 78 achieving under 10%. The highest achievement was 13.0% (one higher figure, of 14.3%, was for an installation on large farm buildings). There were five developments which had achieved less than 6%, the lowest only 4.3% [73]. Research findings from Switzerland and Germany have stressed the same point – that “moderate solar insolation levels” do not strongly support solar PV panels in more northerly latitudes, although Bavaria has seen large quantities installed [76]. Again, as with the wind energy sector, such findings can arouse strong opposition, even in academic quarters. In the same way that the term wind “farms” can arouse antagonism because it can be regarded as misleadingly seeking to have agricultural overtones, so the expression solar “farms” has aroused opposition. They can, of course, be intrusive in the landscape, but in countries in temperate zones it is the loss of agricultural land and implications for food availability and imports which attracts more attention. In the UK and much of Germany solar “farms” can deliver about 4 M/m2, compared with a possible 20 M/m2 if placed in, for example, the Sahara desert. Hopes have rested on concentrated solar power (CSP), involving the placement of large areas of parabolic mirrors in desert locations, together with ultra-high voltage direct current (UHVDC) transmission, in the belief they may offer a sustainable route towards a low carbon future backed by large volumes of useful energy. The basic technology was applied at Meadi, near Cairo, as long ago as 1912 [77]. In recent years political and religious turmoil has raised the challenges of pursuing this option in key areas – North Africa, for instance. Impacts on the landscape would mainly be confined to deserts, especially if UHVDC lines were laid below land surfaces. This would not avoid adverse impacts on some species, especially birds (as can be observed in the Mojave Desert, for example), or drawdown of ‘rare' and genuinely scarce metals [78]. Yet here again MacKay issued words of caution. Solar ‘farms' and CSP he considered produced less power per unit area than individual solar panels because the ratio of panel area to land area is only about 14%, although he recognised that some improvement might occur as a result of technological progress. He concluded that the land area required to meet something like the UK's total current energy consumption would need to be about the same as the UK's total land area. He calculated the same was true for Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Belgium and The Netherlands.
Biomass and biofuels arguably pose the greatest threat to landscapes. Exploitation of woodland and conversion of land areas to agricultural uses have characterised the whole history of human settlements. From charcoal burning to ship building human depredation has altered the landscape. With the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and the use of coal and steam engines some relief was provided, but in recent decades there has been a return to large-scale rural depredation. A comprehensive critique supporting this pessimistic view is provided by Goetz et al. in a recently published paper [79]. The destruction of tropical forests to provide palm oil is a particular case in point. The UK offers an interesting example of the confused thinking and poor application of planning policy in this field. UK planning guidance has had as one of its Key Principles (PPS 22, 1. iv) that environmental benefits of all proposals for renewable energy projects, whatever their scale, are material considerations that should be given significant weight in determining whether proposals should be granted planning permission. Other considerations in PPS 22 included that feedstock fuel availability should be at a maximum distance of 40 kilometres, while an Energy Crops Scheme demanded that input crops should serve a biomass plant also within a 40 kilometre radius catchment area. It was therefore odd that a Planning Inspector assessing a developer's Appeal for burning rapeseed oil or palm oil in a proposed electricity generating plant in Central England (Chelveston, Northamptonshire) allowed the Appeal. The Planning Inspector, Mr. Alan D. Robinson, wrote that he “must deal with the Appeal in the light of current national planning guidance that biomass and energy fuels are regarded as sources of renewable energy” – which he claimed included palm oil to be transported some 11,750 km from points of origin. (June 3rd, 2009). A witness contesting the Appeal had pointed out that according to the best expert advice then available 33 t of carbon dioxide were emitted on average in Indonesia for every 1 t of palm oil produced – and the deforestation caused major habitat and species loss (including that of the Orang Utan) [80]. This proposal, unlike some in Germany and Italy, has never gone ahead, for reasons which have never been made clear. Other such schemes have gone ahead in the UK – for example, using palm oil from Malaysia shipped from Port Kelang. These cases raise fundamental questions about the application of even clearly worded planning guidelines, an issue which again is not confined to the UK. Another curious case concerns the former coal-fired electricity generating plant at Drax, in Yorkshire. Again, parallels with this case can be found in Germany. At Drax it was decided to burn ‘waste wood' or ‘wood chips’ alongside the remnants of coal-fired burning, and £750 million was invested to make this possible. The financial attraction was anticipation of gaining between £450 million and £500 million in annual subsidies. But under a Freedom of Information request in February 2016, it was revealed that the destruction of hardwood forests in Louisiana and Florida, USA, was the source of much of these ‘wood chips' or ‘wood pellets’. This destruction has been the subject of investigation in the USA [81]. Another report has Drax receiving hardwood ‘pellets’ from North Carolina and Virginia, ‘pellets’ from pine woods in Louisiana and Mississippi, and plans to burn wood from Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul [82]. This source also reported on threats to other forest regions – in Europe and especially the Carpathian Mountains across Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine and Romania. It has been estimated that if the EU's 2020 renewable energy targets are to be met up to 16 million hectares of energy crops will be required (and wood is a much denser source of energy than crop residues). In many European countries ancient woodlands continue to be felled, including areas supposedly protected by law, and (in the UK) officially designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Among these supposedly protected forests is the 195
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Methods and Applications, Routledge, Abingdon, UK, 2011. [6] Michael Woods, Deconstructing rural protest: the emergence of a new social movement, J. Rural Stud. 19 (2003) 309–325 (page 312), for aspirational realism or often in pursuit of the rural idyll. [7] Oystein Aas, Patrick Devine-Wright, et al., Public beliefs about high-voltage powerlines in Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom: a comparative survey, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 2 (2014) 30–37 Quotations from page 36. [8] Patrick Devine-Wright, Beyond NIMBYism: towards an integrated framework for understanding public perceptions of wind energy, Wind Energy 8 (2) (2005) 125–139. [9] Maarten Wolsink, Wind power implementation: the nature of public attitudes: equity and fairness instead of ‘backyard motives, Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 11 (1199) (2007) 1188–1207. [10] Patrick Devine-Wright, Matthew Cotton, et al., Experiencing citizen deliberation over energy infrastructure siting: a mixed evaluative study, in: Stefan Bouzarovski (Ed.), The Routledge Research Companion to Energy Geographies, Routledge, Abingdon, England, 2017, pp. 184–199. [11] Alain Nadai, Oliver Labussiere, et al., Exhaustible-renewable wind power, in: Stefan Bouzarovski (Ed.), The Routledge Research Companion to Energy Gepgraphies, Routledge, Abingdon, England, 2017, pp. 306–329. [12] Dan van der Horst, NIMBY or not? Exploring the relevance of location and the politics of voiced opinions in renewable energy siting controversies, Energy Policy 35 (2007) 2705–2714 for NIMBY-ism in general. [13] Dean Apostol, et al., The Renewable Energy Landscape: Preserving Scenic Values in Our Sustainable Future, Routledge, Abingdon, UK, 2017. [14] David Matless, Landscape and Englishness, second edition, Reaktion Books, London, UK, 2016. [15] Edward Abelson (Ed.), A Mirror of England: An Anthology of the Writings of H.J. Massingham (1888–1952), Green Books, Bideford, Devon, England, 1988is a convenient starting point for entering this large volume of literature. [16] W.H. Hudson, A Shepherd’s Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs, Methuen, London, 1910. [17] W.H. Hudson, The Book of a Naturalist, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1919. [18] Richard Jefferies, Wild Life in A Southern County, By the Author of The Gamekeeper at Home, Smith, Elder, London, 1879. [19] Richard Jefferies, The Toilers of the Field, Longmans, Green, London, 1892. [20] George Bourne, Change in the Village, Duckworth, London, 1912. [21] Flora Thompson: A Country Calendar and other writings, in: Margaret Lane (Ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979. [22] H.J. Massingham, et al., The English Countryside: A Survey of Its Chief Features, B.T. Batsford, London, 1939. [23] ‘BB’ (Denys Watkins-Pitchford), The Naturalist’s Bedside Book, Michael Joseph, London, 1980. [24] H.E. Bates, The Face of England, B.T. Batsford, London, 1952. [25] Dean R. Baldwin, H.E. Bates, A Literary Life, Associated University Presses, Cranbury, New Jersey USA, 1987. [26] Stephen Spender, Poems, Faber & Faber, London, 1933, pp. 57–58. [27] James Purdon, Electric Pylon Cinema Poetry, (2013) October http://amodern.net/ article/electric-cinema-pylon-poetry/. [28] John Sutherland, Stephen Spender, The Authorized Biography, Viking/Penguin, London, 2004 (page 107). [29] Nerida M. Anderson, et al., Contested beliefs about land-use are associated with divergent representations of a rural landscape as place, Landsc. Urban Plann. 157 (2017) 75–89 (page 87). [30] Oliver Hilliam, CPRE, Pylons, n.d. (work in progress), CPRE, London. I am greatly indebted to Mr. Hilliam of CPRE for providing me with his unpublished survey. Last entry July, 2007. But paper is undated as stated. [31] Peter Waine, Oliver Hilliam, 22 Ideas that Saved the English Countryside: The Campaign to Protect Rural England, n.d., Frances Lincoln, UK. Year of publication 2016 (appears at end of book. There is no date at front of book). [32] Paul Brassley, et al. (Ed.), Transforming the Countryside: The Electrification of Rural Britain, Routledge, Abingdon, England, 2017. [33] Fiona Reynolds, The Fight for Beauty: Our Path to a Better Future, Oneworld Publications, London England, 2016. [34] Nan Fairbrother, New Lives, New Landscapes, The Architectural Press, London, 1970 (page 108). [35] Vanesa Castan Broto, Energy landscapes and urban trajectories towards sustainability, Energy Policy 108 (2017) 755–764. [36] Jessican de Boer, Christian Zuidema, Towards an integrated energy landscape, Urban Des. Plan. 163 (5) (2015) 231–240. [37] Stephen Bouzarovski, Martin J. Pasqualetti, Vanesa Castan Broto (Eds.), The Routledge Research Companion to Energy Geographies, Routledge, Abingdon, England, 2017. [38] Martin Pasqualetti, Paul Gipe, Robert W. Righter (Eds.), Wind Power in View: Energy Landscapes in a Crowded World, Academic Press (Reed/Elsevier), San Diego and London, 2002. In this book Laurence Short's Wind Power and English Landscape Identity (pages 43–58) is strongly recommended. [39] Alain Nadai, Dan van der Horst, Introduction: landscapes of energies, Landsc. Res. 35 (2) (2010) 143–155. [40] Sven Stremke, Andy van den Dobbelstein (Eds.), Sustainable Energy Landscapes: Designing, Planning, and Development, Taylor & Francis (CRC Press), Boca Raton, Florida, USA, 2013. [41] Lucas Amin, Shell and Exxon’s €5 Bn. Problem: Gas Drilling That Sets off Earthquakes and Wrecks Homes, The Guardian, UK, 2015 October 10. [42] S. Hirschberg, et al., Energy from the Earth, Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, Zurich, 2015.
World Heritage Site of the Bialowieza Forest, covering an area of nearly 142,000 ha on the border of Poland and Belarus, but which is now being destroyed despite “a structured dialogue” taking place between the EU Commission and Poland since 2008 to control this [83,84]. Brazil’s Sierra Ricardo Franco Park was supposed to be a conservation area, but is being stripped for farming amid allegations of corruption and lawlessness [85]. Yet it is well established that the use of wood as an energy input can, over its full lifecycle, result in carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in volumes exceeding the burning of coal [86]. The use of crops and crop wastes as biomass and biofuel inputs arguably does not pose the same threats to the landscape. However, the diversion of food crop acreage to Miscanthus, for example, does raise issues of food availability and prices. The spread of monoculture should also be constrained. There has been much discussion about secondgeneration biofuels – using non-food residual parts of crops through fermentation to produce lignocellulosic ethanol – and third-generation biofuels using algae, over the past twenty years, but apart from one large-scale demonstration plant run by Iogen in Canada and one joint project it has with Raizen in Brazil there is little progress that can be reported. 8. Conclusion A realistic assessment of the future of rural landscapes under the pressures to engage in a transition to a low carbon future indicates huge challenges ahead. The visual intrusion of wind energy developments on rural landscapes, and the beginnings of visual intrusion of solar ‘farms’ and further transmission linkages as well, raise acute concerns about where the world is headed. The amounts of land required to accommodate solar ‘farms’ and CSP are very considerable. Already the efforts to exploit modern biomass and biofuels have raised severe problems and concerns. The displacement of people and severe disruption of traditional work patterns and culture have been particularly severe in the hydroelectricity sector. The efficacy of policies, measures, and investments has been shown to be severely inadequate – as have been the performance of many of the regulators, bureaucrats, and planning inspectors introducing, scrutinising, and applying them – not least in protecting scenic landscapes and guiding the positioning of renewable energy schemes optimally. Perhaps some of the issues raised here are a reflection on societies where many are losing touch with nature in an urbanising world. A recent UK poll concluded 70% are in that position, exposing “a nation significantly removed from its land and natural habitats”, “where people have little knowledge of the country's wildlife”, and where 13% “had not even been to the countryside for more than two years” [87]. These results were in line with a survey conducted by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in April 2017, which found over 50% of the respondents could not identify a chaffinch, and over 20% did not know a red kite was a bird. Whether such indifference and/or ignorance will win over the concerns of the “over 8 million people in the UK”, who support “Wildlife and Countryside Link” through its 45 member organisations and 170,000 volunteers, remains an open question but not one imbued with optimism that the latter will eventually win [88]. References [1] Patrick Devine-Wright (Ed.), Renewable Energy and the Public, Earthscan, London, UK, 2011. [2] Michael Jefferson, Closing the gap between energy research and modelling, the social sciences, and modern realities, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 4 (2014) 42–52. [3] Michael Jefferson, There's nothing much new under the sun: the challenges of exploiting and using energy and other resources through history, Energy Policy 86 (2015) 804–811. [4] Martin J. Pasqualetti, Reading the changing energy landscape, in: Sven Stremke, Andy van den Dobbelsteen (Eds.), Sustainable Energy Landscapes: Design, Planning and Development, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 2013. [5] Lynne Manzo, Patrick Devine-Wright (Eds.), Place Attachment: Advances in Theory,
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2010. November 2010, Society for Wind Vigilance. www.windvigilance.com. [66] Michael A. Nissenbaum, et al., Effects of industrial turbine noise on sleep and health, Noise Health 60 (14) (2012) 237–243. [67] Frede Hvelplund, et al., Incentives and barriers for wind power expansion and system integration in Denmark, Energy Policy 107 (2017) 573–584. [68] Matthias Schulz, Mutiny in the Land of Wind Turbines, Der Spiegel, 2013 July 12. [69] Jack Darnell, Michael Jefferson (Eds.), New Renewable Energy Resources: A Guide to the Future, Kogan Page, London, UK, 1994. [70] Emily Gosden, England Not Windy Enough, Admits Wind Energy Chief, The Daily Telegraph, 2016 June 4. [71] Malcolm Grimston, The Paralysis in Energy Decision Making, Whittles Publishing, Dunbeath, Scotland, 2016 page 132. [72] UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy: Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics 2017, July 2017, Table 6.5, page 189. [73] Analysis of Ofgem and Renewable Energy Foundation data by the author provided here for the first time. [74] Patrick Devine-Wright, et al., Fostering public engagement in wind energy development: the role of intermediaries and community benefits, in: Joseph Szarka (Ed.), Learning from Wind Power: Governance, Societal and Policy Perspectives on Sustainable Energy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 194–214. [75] J.C. David MacKay, Solar energy in the context of energy use, energy transportation and energy storage, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A (2013), rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org. [76] F. Ferroni, R.J. Hopkirk, Energy Return on Energy Invested for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation, Energy Policy 94 (2016) 336–344. Also Ferroni and Hopkirk: Further considerations to: Energy Return on Energy Invested for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation, 2017, Energy Policy, 107, 498–505. [77] Ken Butti, John Perlin, A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, USA, 1980, pp. 101–111. [78] Charles McCombie, Michael Jefferson, Renewable and nuclear electricity: comparison of environmental impacts, Energy Policy 96 (2016) 758–769. [79] Ariane Goetz, et al., Do no harm? Risk perceptions in national bioenergy policies and actual mitigation performance, Energy Policy 108 (2017) 776–790. [80] Britt Childs, Rob Bradley, Plants at the Pump: Biofuels, Climate Change and Sustainability, World Resources Institute, Washington, DC, 2008 See also UK Planning Appeal Decision Ref. APP/G2815/A/08/2088102 of 3rd June, 2009. [81] National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Report: In the US Southeast, natural forests are being felled to fuel overseas, 2015, New York. https://www.nrdc.org/ sites/default/files/southeast-biomass-exports-report.pdf. [82] Fred Pearce, Up in Flames: How biomass burning wreck's Europe's forests, November, 2015, Fern. ISBN: 978-1-906607-61-6. [83] Jaroslow Krogulec, Gui-Xi Young, Paradise Lost: the devastation of Bialowieza Forest, Birdlife International: Europe & Central Asia, April 26, 2017. Gui-Xi Young and Jaroslow Krogulec: "Trial & Error: The Battle for Bialowieza", Birdlife International: Europe & Central Asia, September 27, 2017. [84] UNESCO/World Heritage Convention: Bialowieza Forest, http://whc.unesco.org/ en/list/33 (Accessed 28 May 2017). [85] Jonathan Watts, Wild Amazon Faces Destruction as Farmers and Loggers Target National Park: The Sierra Ricardo Franco Park, The Observer, 2017 May 28. [86] Anna L. Stephenson, David J.C. MacKay, Life Cycle Impacts of Biomass Electricity in 2020: Scenarios for Assessing the Greenhouse Gas Impacts and Energy Input Requirements of Using North American Woody Biomass for Electricity Generation in the UK, Department of Energy & Climate Change, UK, 2014 July. [87] B. Farmer, Nature Campaigners Warn Our Knowledge of Wildlife Is Dying Out, The Daily Telegraph, 2017 24th. July, page 27. [88] Wildlife and Countryside Link at http://www.wcl.org.uk/.
[43] M. Kousis, Collective resistance and sustainable development in rural Greece: the case of Geothermal Energy on the Island of Milos, Sociol. Rural 1 (1993) 3–24. [44] M. Stauffacher, et al., Framing deep geothermal energy in mass media: the case of Switzerland, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change 98 (2015) 60–70. [45] Conrad Kunze, Mareen Hertel, Contested deep geothermal energy in Germany. The emergence of an environmental protest, Energy Res. Move. Soc. Sci. 27 (174) (2017) 180. [46] Viviana Ferrario, Benedetta Castiglioni, Visibility/invisibility in the ‘making’ of energy landscape. Strategies and policies in the hydropower development of the Piave river (Italian Eastern Alps), Energy Policy 108 (2017) 829–835. [47] The World Commission on Dams Framework, (2008) February 29 https://www. internationalrivers.org/resources/the-world-commission-on-dams-framework. [48] India's Greatest Planned Environmental Disaster: The Narmada Valley Dam Projects, http://umich.edu/∼snre492/Jones/narmada.html (Accessed 17April 2017). [49] John Vidal, Brazil's Giant Dams Risk Destroying Heart of the Amazon, Says Greenpeace, The Guardian, UK, 2016 June 15. [50] Sui-Lee Wee, Thousands Being Moved from China's Three Gorges – Again, Reuters, 2012 August 23, http://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/ (Accessed 31 May 2017). [51] Maria Vedin, The Dams Inside, Chapter 4 in Ann Danaiya Usher (ed.): Dams as Aid: A political anatomy of Nordic development thinking, 1997, Routledge London. Also: Oystein Dalland: The Last Big Dam in Norway: Whose Victory? (Chapter 5). [52] Michael Jefferson, A renewable energy future? in: Roger Fouquet (Ed.), Handbook on Energy and Climate Change, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, England, 2013, pp. 254–269. [53] Canadian Council of Canadian Academics: Understanding the Evidence: Wind Turbine Noise, The Expert Panel on Wind Turbine Noise and Human Health, Ottawa (2015). [54] Anahita A. Jami, Philip R. Walsh, From consultation to collaboration: a participatory framework for positive community engagement with wind energy projects in Ontario, Canada, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 27 (2017) 14–24. [55] Alain Nadai, ‘Planning’, ‘siting’ and the local acceptance of wind power: some lessons from the French case, Energy Policy 35 (2007) 2715–2726. [56] G.P. van den Berg, The Sound of High Winds: The Effect of Atmospheric Stability on Wind Power Sound and Microphone Noise, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands, 2006. [57] Dan van der Horst, NIMBY or not? Exploring the relevance of location and the politics of voiced opinions in renewable energy siting controversies, Energy Policy 35 (2007) 2705–2714. [58] Maarten Wolsink, Planning of renewables schemes: deliberative and fair decisionmaking on landscape issues instead of reproachful accusations of non-cooperation, Energy Policy 35 (2007) 2692–2704. [59] Sylvia Breukers, Maarten Wolsink, Wind power implementation in changing institutional landscapes: an international comparison, Energy Policy (35 2007) 2737–2750. [60] D. Bowdler, ETSU-R-97: Why it is wrong, New Acoustics, (2005) July https://www. newacoustics.co.uk. [61] D. Bowdler, Amplitude modulation of wind turbine noise, Acoust. Bull. (July–August) (2008). [62] M. Stigwood, Large wind turbines – are they too big for ETSU-R-97? Wind Turbine Noise, Institute of Acoustics, 2009. [63] Amanda Harry, Wind Turbines, Noise and Health, (2007) February, (privately published). [64] Christopher Hanning, Wind turbine noise, Br. Med. J. 344 (March) (2012) e1527. [65] Christopher Hanning, Wind Turbine Noise, Sleep and Health, updated in April 8,
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Energy Research & Social Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/erss
Perspectives
Safeguarding rural landscapes in the new era of energy transition to a low carbon future
MARK
Michael Jefferson ESCP Europe Business School, Research Centre for Energy Management, United Kingdom
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Rural landscapes Renewable energy Intrusions and threats concerns Concerns, and responses required
This paper focuses on threatened future intrusions of energy infrastructure on rural landscapes. In recent years there has been a large outpouring of publications apparently related to “the energy landscape” and “urban energy landscape”. In the author's view this is a misleading use of the word “landscape”. Here the words “rural landscape” refer to rural and countryside, as distinct from town, as they have done in the English language for over 400 years (according to the Oxford English Dictionary). There are many reasons for concern about the future of our rural landscapes due to human initiatives, among which are scarcely constrained developments of onshore wind turbines, ground-mounted solar PV, and “modern” biomass and biofuels. Guidelines and regulations aimed at protection are frequently evaded. Those supposed to apply guidelines and regulations often fail in their duty. Areas supposed to be protected from intrusion by international, national, or local regulations are exploited. A sustainable future requires us to preserve scenic values and protect many rural landscapes. This will require much stricter limits on the location of renewable energy developments in the countryside.
1. Introduction What is to be discussed here is a very different concept of energy landscapes – the mapping of conformations of molecular entities – focussed upon by some physical scientists. Here the focus is on our rural landscapes. This is how the word “landscape” is usually conceived – inland scenery; and rural as distinct from towns and cities. The threat is of an increasing number of energy structures which many people now consider, or will, or should, increasingly consider look out of place and undermine the beauty of our rural landscapes. The cause of this concern is the expectation, signs of which can already be noted in many countries and landscapes, that visually intrusive structures in – and exploitation of – the remaining countryside will escalate as efforts are made to move to a lower carbon world. As the term landscape refers to inland scenery, what follows will not cover offshore wind energy developments, estuarine barrages or tidal ‘lagoons’, wave or tidal stream technologies, although these may be observable from the land. As Patrick Devine-Wright has recognised, how seascapes may be valued as onshore locations is often overlooked in development strategies [1]. Few would term most landscapes around the world as “natural”, for human inroads from deforestation, agriculture, and even much afforestation have altered these landscapes. Most of us, hopefully, are aware of the sometimes gross intrusions on our landscapes of past fires, charcoal burning, shipbuilding, and fossil fuel developments. In some
E-mail addresses: jeff[email protected], mjeff[email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.10.005 Received 2 June 2017; Received in revised form 5 October 2017; Accepted 5 October 2017 2214-6296/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
countries – Brazil and Indonesia among them – the destruction of forests continues, with tragic consequences for the habitats of many rare species and some indigenous people [2,3]. Even in Europe and the USA, as noted later, forests are being cut down for reasons not always honestly admitted. These are matters which have long been noticed and noted down. Martin Pasqualetti, in his chapter in the book: “Sustainable Energy Landscapes” [4], has given a succinct account of the history of the changing landscape. He shows a photograph of a coal mine in Mud, West Virginia, which seems to almost encircle a house – coal mines are legally permitted there to come within 300 feet of a house. He goes on to provide illustrations from oil and oil sands development, power plants – a nuclear plant among them, dams and pumped storage plants, wind turbines, geothermal plants, biogas and solar PV plants. In some ways there is, as so often, not much new in this. But nowadays, and for as long as concern lasts about enhanced near-surface global warming and the availability and affordability of useful energy, there is a high likelihood that intrusive structures will escalate in our landscapes. The visible effects of landscape intrusion vary according to the viewer, their past experience and recollections, their age (apparently), their aspirations (such as living in a “rural idyll”), and the landscape affected. Patrick Devine-Wright has pointed out that the English appear to be more sensitive to their landscapes and intrusion thereon than the Dutch or Germans: the English have greater “place attachment”. He is a
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Spender's poem goes on:
co-author of a paper which concluded several new transmission power lines “have been met with strong public opposition, notably in two of the countries researched in this study – Norway and the UK.” Indeed, the latter paper found: “there were consistently lower levels of acceptance, both generally and locally, in the UK in comparison to the Scandinavian countries” [5–7]. Patrick lives in rural mid-Devon, England. The author also lives in rural England. Those who oppose landscape intrusions (derisorily referred to as a NIMBY – ‘not in my backyard' member) are often likely to be rational and well-informed, as Patrick has pointed out. Maarten Wolsink has stated: “Actually, the combination of generally positive attitudes and oppositional behaviour based on motives related to the ‘backyard' idea are rare” [8–12]. They are not necessarily selfish – adverse criticisms often made by developers and their agents who are seeking to make large amounts of money out of renewable energy developments and the subsidies frequently available thereon. They may well, however, go beyond the claim made by some authors – including Wolsink – that with earlier and improved consultation with local residents such opposition will fade away. For those who truly love their rural landscapes it is not simply a matter of being consulted or cajoled into agreeing on visual intrusions (wind turbines, solar PV systems) or the undermining of sustainable development (much biomass and biofuel development). Inappropriate use, or deliberate misuse, of language is not confined to the NIMBY tag. Expressions such as “wind farms”, “solar farms”, and the recently become fashionable “energy landscape” and even “urban energy landscape” may be regarded as misleading. Onshore wind turbines are more appropriately termed “wind energy developments” (as are offshore ones); solar panels stretching across agricultural land better termed “solar mirrors” or “ground-mounted solar PV”. Seeking to hijack a rural environment by use of the word “farm” should be opposed. Visual or acoustic intrusions on the rural landscape should not be disguised by using a term which suggests merging with the landscape – the reality is that this rarely occurs. Instead we need strict enforcement of the requirement that large areas should be exempt from such intrusions – as indicated by the title of the important contribution in this field: “The Renewable Energy Landscape: Preserving scenic values in our sustainable future.” This book begins with a futuristic account of journeys across the USA in 2030. There is no respite from wind turbines, high-voltage transmission lines, shorn forests, and solar ‘farms’. Even when one reaches the Pacific Ocean a flock of wave buoys will greet you [13].
“But far above and far as sight endures Like whips of anger With lightning's danger There runs the quick perspective of the future.” [26] Such literary and poetic outpourings may be described as part of the “cultural” landscape in some quarters, but it does not seem to be a particularly illuminating or accurate description. Instead, this poem, for most readers, will suggest hostility to pylons on the part of Spender. Yet it has been claimed that this poem attracted “unkind” comments and parody, and for one commentator at least it demonstrated that “the pylon-line resembled a heroic ideal, stalking off over the hills into a clean, rational future.” His official biographer, James Purdon, wrote: German Expressionism inspired his most anthologized poem of the period, ‘The Pylons’, an homage to the National Grid which has all the graphic starkness of a ‘Ufa’ film poster.” [27,28] More recently there has been reference to the need “to promote culturally sustainable landscapes” [29]. This paper is primarily focussed upon afforestation in Tasmania, but it justifiably concludes that “the conceptual framework could be extended to other land use changes and infrastructural installations, particularly land uses that visually or functionally disrupt existing meanings attributed to the rural landscape” . To “installations” visible in the rural landscape in England may be included the beauties of Stone Age forts and barrows, Emperor Hadrian's Wall, Norman castle mounds, medieval churches, fine historic country houses, and thatched cottages huddled together in England, and such equivalents as may exist elsewhere. But over the past 90 years there have been battles over visual intrusion of energy infrastructure, not least electricity pylons and overhead transmission lines. The early arguments were over either bringing electricity supplies speedily and cost-effectively to homes and farms, or bearing the heavy additional costs of burying the lines to avoid visual intrusion. This battle took off seriously in 1928 in England with the Sub-Committee on Electricity of the then called Council for the Preservation of Rural England (still the CPRE but the word Preservation dropped in favour of Protect). It was a battle that was largely lost over the years, although it increased the awareness and sensitivity of the supplying Central Electricity Board [30–33]. Yet even some who claimed not to admire pylons striding across “our intimate countryside”, have also claimed that they do not disfigure the countryside “but can quickly disappear if new research makes them obsolete, and this we should insist on” [34]. Nan Fairbrother, who wrote those words in her book: “New Lives, New Landscapes”, published in 1970, was also the first person to introduce me to the term “urban landscape”, which has caused irritation ever since. This is, of course, a personal perspective and the works of Vanesa Castan Broto on “urban energy landscapes” and of Jessica de Boer and Christian Zuidema on “Towards an integrated energy landscape” published in Urban Design and Planning are among those that have aroused recent interest [35,36]. Rather astonishingly, a recently published “Routledge Research Companion to Energy Geographies” has claimed that there is “an important lacuna in the academic, educational and publicist literature” relating to “an integrated perspective on the relationship between energy and geography” (page 2). Yet on page 5 it is stated: “However, the dominant public issue is their visual presence in the landscape, as identified by several geographers (Pasqualetti et al.). It has continued to grow and evolve in many countries, most recently taking on the mantle of what has come to be called “energy landscapes” (Nadai and van der Horst)” [37–39]. Then on page 135 Martin Pasqualetti rightly states that: “Often energy landscapes are visual affronts to personal aesthetics – such as might occur from the installation of wind farms and transmission pylons.” This statement is somewhat undermined when it is claimed later on the same page that: “in Western countries landscape transformations attracted little attention up to the 1960s when concerns raised by environmental movements started to be recognised by larger publics” [37]. As discussed above, the concerns were of long standing.
2. The landscape, national perceptions and/or traditions, and “culture” Many English people have long been marked out as particularly sensitive to, and often well informed about, the beauty and sensitivity of the rural landscape around them. This is not to claim that their love of the English countryside has been uninfluenced by forces and cultures elsewhere – as far afield as China. Those who have read David Matless’s book: “Landscapes and Englishness” will recognise all this [14]. Those who have works by W. H. Hudson, Richard Jefferies, George Bourne (who also wrote under his real name, George Sturt), H.J. Massingham, Flora Thompson, Denys Watkins-Pritchard ('BB'), and the early works of H.E. Bates on their bookshelves will feel it profoundly, and only a few can be referenced here [15–25]. Edward Abelson’s anthology of John Massingham's writings makes a convenient starting point [15]. Those familiar with this material will empathise with E. M. Forster’s lament in “The Abinger Pageant” (1934) about “arterial roads, by-passes, petrol pumps, and pylons – are these going to be England?” Those who follow poets from William Wordsworth to Stephen Spender writing of the rural landscape will also recognise this, and mull over Spender's “The Pylons”: “Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete That trails black wire Pylons, those pillars Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret.” 192
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lost. Marshland, important for many species – especially birds – can be lost. Also, deliberate efforts can be made by authorities and/or developers to mask spatial, social, and environmental ‘inconvenient truths’ as Viviana Ferrario and Bendetta Castiglioni have illustrated in the context of Italy's Piave River [46]. This, therefore, is by no means the end of the story. Up to 80 million people had been displaced by hydroelectric dams by the year 2000 according to the World Commission on Dams, which proposed various measures to improve decision-making and recognise the rights of, and risks for, all interested parties – including those people directly affected [47]. Yet the dam building and uprooting of people without appropriate recognition and compensation goes on. Opponents of India's over 3000 Narvada Valley large and small dam projects estimate 1.5 million people will be displaced [48]. Some 400,000 people are estimated to be adversely affected by dams proposed on the Omo River in Ethiopia. A further 10,000 are estimated to be displaced by the Bakun dam in Sarawak, Malaysia. The 40 major dams proposed along Brazil’s Tapajos River will drastically upset the lives and livelihoods of four tribal groups (their land will be submerged) and, according to Greenpeace International, risks destroying “the heart of the Amazon” [49]. China’s Three Gorges Dam displaced over 1.3 million people [50]. In almost all disputed cases the people most adversely affected are indigenous, and the claims by developers of the power likely to be produced considerably over-stated. For over twenty years the World Bank has come in for severe criticism for supporting such schemes, overseas aid organisations for encouraging them, and foreign developers (once largely private sector, but nowadays joined by Chinese investment interests) for seeking to make money at the expense of those victimised. The World Bank itself has recognised that the number of people displaced by such schemes has been about 50% higher than planning estimates The human consequences can often be overlooked by those who are focussed upon hydropower’s low carbon emissions and prepared to back powerful international lobbying interests, but the failures to protect the interests of local people and understand their cultures goes back over a century – to Sweden of all countries. The first of a series of hydropower schemes in the picturesque North of Sweden had profound local consequences. As Maria Vedin has put it, even in Sweden there was almost complete ignorance of the Sami reindeer culture, herding routes, the occupations and traditions of local communities around Porjus, a “place which was considered to be more or less uninhabited, especially when seen from the perspective of planners in Stockholm” [51]. Little more than fifty years later, a similar set of processes (or lack of them) was set off by the plan to dam Norway's Kautokeino River with the Alta Dam. The dam was completed in 1987, after nearly two decades of strife in which the adverse impacts on the Sami people there and their reindeer herding were again evident. The authorities in Oslo pushed through the scheme despite opposition from the municipal authorities in Alta and Kautokeino, and from Finland lying just over the national border. Thus was the traditional migration route of over 40,000 reindeer blocked, two important villages submerged, and the important salmon spawning grounds destroyed. What may cause considerable surprise is the fact that in 1974 a newly appointed Minister of Environment, Gro Harlem Brundtland, blocked efforts to conduct environmental studies of the area to be affected, as Oystein Dalland has confirmed . It may well be that by 1982 the Alta case was indeed for Mrs. Brundtland the “special case, sharpening our consciousness of the value of nature, and how this ought to be recognised before any steps are taken that may change the conditions for ever… So, those persons who previously have treated hydro-power schemes without the necessary consideration they deserve ought to have learned once and for all from the Alta case and all its aspects” . But in the wake of the Alta case both Norwegian and Swedish overseas aid and commercial interests acted in the 1990s with “pervasive appraisal optimism” in Laos, Tanzania, and Chile to the benefit of Kvaerner and Vattenfall, among others [51]. A great deal needs to be done to improve initial assessment
Similarly, on page 135, reference is made to “public awareness of energy landscapes started to change with a series of well-publicized events that included … accumulating acid-rain damage to forests in the early 1980s” [37]. So much for the controversy during the 1960s of the damage acid rain was causing to forests and lakes in Scandinavia (from coal-fired electricity generation in Poland, East and West Germany, and the UK) which led to the 1972 Stockholm Conference. But we need to move on from “the cultural landscape”. The main concern as we look forward is the need to avoid rural landscapes being swamped and visually destroyed by renewable energy structures – notably wind turbines, ground-mounted solar PV, and ‘modern’ biomass and biofuel developments. They cannot, of course, be banned altogether. But their positioning has to be carefully considered and severely rationed, taking into account visual intrusion and optimal location for their efficacy. Already guidelines, regulations and incentives abound for renewable energy developments, but they are all too frequently circumvented or changed when deemed inconvenient. Losing valued landscapes extends far beyond losing a view. Another important work in this field has concluded: there is a need for a better integration of aesthetics and environmental psychology into the shaping of sustainable energy landscapes, and this calls for a multidisciplinary approach [40,page 492]. 3. Past and emerging intrusions of energy infrastructure on the rural landscape The deep intrusions of past coal mining on landscapes are familiar to many older people in numerous industrialised countries, and to others who still experience mined and open-cast coal operations in so many countries around the world. Nor have landscapes been immune from the intrusion of oil and gas structures – from exploration and production drilling to refineries, tank ‘farms', and over-ground pipelines; or from electricity generating and nuclear power plants. Electricity pylons ‘striding' across beautiful, and not so beautiful, landscapes have already been mentioned. Below ground too there are legitimate grounds for concern about nuclear waste storage and pollution caused by ‘fracking'. Earth “tremors” have been a focus for concerns about the results of “fracking”, with the rapid increase of “earthquakes” in recent years in parts of the USA (notably Oklahoma and Texas); in western Canada; and in the Bowland area of North-West England. But earth tremors have also been associated with traditional oil and gas production, such as those which have caused extensive damage to properties in the Groningen area of The Netherlands [41]. Even what some would claim is a form of renewable energy – geothermal (although the International Energy Agency, for example, does not) – has caused earth tremors. Deep Geothermal Energy has been cited as the cause of earth tremors on the Greek island of Melos; near Basel in Switzerland; Staufen, Landau and Unterhaching in Germany; Australia's Cooper Basin; and Geysers in California, for example [42–45]. But the main concern of this paper is on the threatened massive expansion of wind, solar, biomass and biofuel developments around a world which is heavily focussed on decarbonising fuel sources, although in some parts of the world hydropower schemes still pose challenges. 4. Hydropower impacts on rural landscapes and rural dwellers Hydropower, and the dams built to retain the vast amounts of water that the relevant planners seek, are an obvious point to start on the relevant technologies likely to be intrusive on the rural landscape and thus requiring careful prior assessment and monitoring during operation. So far as landscapes are concerned, submersion of land upstream can result in decay of plant material and production of methane. The reservoirs themselves can silt up, reducing their capacity and thereby reducing the amount of water that can be used for hydroelectricity. Downstream, riverside forests, grasslands and agricultural land can be 193
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all discussed, albeit briefly [69,pages 170–175]. The significance of local mean wind speeds and the problems of visual intrusion varying with local topography were also highlighted. Most of these adverse criticisms have been rejected by the industry, usually without proper examination, over much of the past 23 years. It was not until June 4th, 2016, that a new CEO of Renewable UK was to say:
of hydropower schemes and their impact on the landscape, the people and occupations directly affected, improve policy and regulatory frameworks, and ensure that these frameworks are rigorously and consistently applied. Over the past twenty-five years there has been a huge surge in the implanting of new energy structures into rural landscapes without taking due account of these basic principles. Wind, solar, biomass and biofuel schemes, provide the most obvious examples.
“We are almost certainly not talking about the possibility of new plants in England. The project economics wouldn't work; the wind speeds don't allow for it.” [70]
5. Intrusions of wind energy developments on rural landscapes
However, Hugh McNeal, the interviewee, ended by saying that “the economics could potentially be better for projects that involved removing small old turbines and building bigger, more powerful replacements on the same site." Repowering is likely to become a bigger issue, and it will be important for those concerned with the impacts of wind turbines on the landscape to push for siting where mean wind speeds are relatively high, turbine heights are kept modest (the official 125 m limit is quite high enough in England and other densely populated countries, for example, rather than up to 200 m as is the case in Sweden, or 165 m in Germany), and close attention is paid to scenic quality and its retention. Malcolm Grimston, in an excellent and insufficiently recognised book, pointed out that, globally, the average capacity factor achieved has been around 23.9% in recent years [71]. It remains closer to 20% for much of the UK, despite some efforts to give a more optimistic impression. Depending on the basis of official calculations, the average in 2016 fell in the range 23.7%–24.2% for onshore UK wind energy developments [72]. A recent survey found 418 of the UK's larger onshore wind energy developments by late 2016 had achieved rolling annual average capacity factors below 20% – 186 in England; 106 in Scotland (a very disappointing figure as mean wind speeds in Scotland are probably the highest in Europe); 101 in Northern Ireland; but encouragingly only 25 in Wales. Ten of these developments recorded recent capacity factors achieved of less than 10% [73]. These figures indicate that almost 30% of the UK's larger onshore wind energy developments failed to achieve a capacity factor of 20%. These figures are surprising because for over 20 years the UK industry organisation (British Wind Energy Association and its successor, Renewable UK) claimed developers should assume achievement of a 30% capacity factor for Planning Applications, and most developers did so. It is vitally important for the future of UK useful energy supplies to focus attention on raising the capacity factors achieved by UK wind energy developments through careful siting which reflects sensitivity to visual intrusion in the landscape as well as mean wind speeds in the locality. The sorts of questions raised by onshore wind energy developments in the UK (and especially English) landscape are mirrored in the USA, France, Germany, The Netherlands, France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, and perhaps other countries. Moving towards a low carbon economy requires precautionary measures backed by sound investments, not clearly sub-optimal ones, to minimise adverse impacts on the landscape. Wind energy developments are potentially the most intrusive form of renewable energy on the landscape. They are also the most likely source of visual intrusion on coastal locations, where many people choose to live, as has been pointed out by Patrick Devine-Wright in a fairly comprehensive survey of wind power edited by Joseph Szarka and four others [74].
Although the use of wind turbines to generate electricity has occurred since the end of the 19th Century, the past thirty years have witnessed a massive expansion in the number of wind turbines in many countries, and a trend towards ever taller ones, with correspondingly greater intrusion on rural landscapes and the lives of rural dwellers. In some respects this is understandable, given the attractions of harnessing wind for electricity output. Unfortunately, many of the resulting developments and subsidies have been sub-optimal in their location and performance. There has been a large volume of publications relating to issues of visual intrusion on rural landscapes, intermittency, capacity factors achieved, proximity to dwellings and transport routes, aerodynamic (or amplitude) modulation, manufacturing conditions, and some of the raw materials used [52]. Ongoing major issues resulting have related to “place attachment” and knowledge of local conditions in rural areas; the importance of careful location in achieving satisfactory capacity factors; potential, and sometimes actual, impacts on rural property prices, sleep patterns and health. On the more positive side, costs of turbines have fallen, capacity factors achieved have tended to rise – both onshore and, especially offshore; and there has been some – though still arguably inadequate – recognition of impacts on property prices and sleep patterns. For those based in the UK there has been an outpouring of relevant information from overseas on the potentially harmful effects of “aerodynamic modulation” on sleep patterns and health caused by undue proximity to wind energy developments – Frits van den Berg, E. Pedersen, K. Persson Waye, and Nina Pierpont are among those listed in a Canadian report: “Understanding the Evidence: Wind Turbine Noise” [53]. Others include Alain Nadai, Godefridus Petrus van den Berg, Dan van der Horst, and Maarten Wolsink [54–58]. Important ‘home-grown' inputs have come from Dick Bowdler and Mike Stigwood on aerodynamic modulation (and the shortcomings of the UK’s criteria for ‘noise' set out in ETSU-R-97); and from Christopher Hanning and Amanda Harry on “Wind Turbines, Noise and Health” (the title of Dr. Harry’s report of February 2007) [59–66]. The issues raised on health impacts are inevitably ‘energy landscape’-related, as they principally impact on rural dwellers – especially those located within 1.5 kilometres of a wind energy development. Similarly, adverse impacts on property values may be considered by some as outside the remit of landscape considerations, but few would consider evidence of (often) a 15% drop in the value of their rural home as trivial. Opposition to onshore and near-shore wind energy developments has been escalating even in countries where there was once a high degree of public acceptance – such as Denmark and Germany – and much of this opposition is founded on visual intrusion on the rural and coastal landscape. It has been stated that in Denmark “growing neighbour resistance is to an increasing degree hindering wind power projects based on large onshore wind turbines.” As long ago as 2013 Der Spiegel reported on “Mutiny in the Land of Wind Turbines” with “local residents up in arms” in picturesque rural locations [67,68]. Many of the issues which have arisen in recent years, and raise concerns for the future, were covered in a World Energy Council study in 1994 [69]. Visual impacts, noise (emphasising the aerodynamic component), bird mortality (already citing US experience as well as that of Tarifa, in Spain), safety and telecommunications interference were
6. Intrusion of solar PV developments on the rural landscape Solar energy will also have an increasing impact on the energy ‘landscape’. Here the central question raised is whether this is a sound investment in areas of relatively low direct and indirect solar insolation. In areas of relatively high solar insolation this issue is less pressing, especially for solar water heating and some other applications. A more general question is whether the availability of subsidies has 194
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7. Intrusion of biomass and biofuel developments on the rural landscape
encouraged, and will encourage, dubious investments. There is no doubt that sunshine falling on the Earth is perhaps as much as sixty times world annual current power consumption. But, as the late David MacKay explained, things are not as simple as that. Not only do levels of direct and indirect solar insolation vary across latitudes and seasons, they also vary sharply during daylight hours. MacKay concluded that “the realistic potential of sunshine is only a little larger, on average, than current consumption” [75]. For example, the UK is not noted for having high direct or indirect levels of solar insolation. London has roughly a 20% greater solar insolation (or flux), at about 110 W/m2, than Edinburgh (about 95 W/ m2); Athens has double the solar insolation (around 190 W/m2) of Edinburgh. Athens has about the same level of solar insolation as Denver, Colorado, but over 30% less than in some locations in Africa and the Pacific. Solar insolation levels can vary ten-fold during the year – from 20 W/m2 in December to 200 W/m2 in July in London. Not surprisingly, capacity factors achieved by solar installations vary greatly depending upon latitude and other locational factors. In Spain they can achieve 23%; in parts of the USA up to around 25%. Yet globally the average capacity factor achieved by solar PV is “just 11.8%” [71]. In the UK average achieved capacity factors have ranged from 9.8% to 11.4% in recent years [72]. The higher figures are more commonly achieved in the South-West of England. Examination of 635 ground-mounted solar PV developments in the UK by the end of 2016 showed 509 achieving a rolling average capacity factor between 10.0% and 12.0% (80% of the total number), with 48 achieving over 12% and 78 achieving under 10%. The highest achievement was 13.0% (one higher figure, of 14.3%, was for an installation on large farm buildings). There were five developments which had achieved less than 6%, the lowest only 4.3% [73]. Research findings from Switzerland and Germany have stressed the same point – that “moderate solar insolation levels” do not strongly support solar PV panels in more northerly latitudes, although Bavaria has seen large quantities installed [76]. Again, as with the wind energy sector, such findings can arouse strong opposition, even in academic quarters. In the same way that the term wind “farms” can arouse antagonism because it can be regarded as misleadingly seeking to have agricultural overtones, so the expression solar “farms” has aroused opposition. They can, of course, be intrusive in the landscape, but in countries in temperate zones it is the loss of agricultural land and implications for food availability and imports which attracts more attention. In the UK and much of Germany solar “farms” can deliver about 4 M/m2, compared with a possible 20 M/m2 if placed in, for example, the Sahara desert. Hopes have rested on concentrated solar power (CSP), involving the placement of large areas of parabolic mirrors in desert locations, together with ultra-high voltage direct current (UHVDC) transmission, in the belief they may offer a sustainable route towards a low carbon future backed by large volumes of useful energy. The basic technology was applied at Meadi, near Cairo, as long ago as 1912 [77]. In recent years political and religious turmoil has raised the challenges of pursuing this option in key areas – North Africa, for instance. Impacts on the landscape would mainly be confined to deserts, especially if UHVDC lines were laid below land surfaces. This would not avoid adverse impacts on some species, especially birds (as can be observed in the Mojave Desert, for example), or drawdown of ‘rare' and genuinely scarce metals [78]. Yet here again MacKay issued words of caution. Solar ‘farms' and CSP he considered produced less power per unit area than individual solar panels because the ratio of panel area to land area is only about 14%, although he recognised that some improvement might occur as a result of technological progress. He concluded that the land area required to meet something like the UK's total current energy consumption would need to be about the same as the UK's total land area. He calculated the same was true for Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Belgium and The Netherlands.
Biomass and biofuels arguably pose the greatest threat to landscapes. Exploitation of woodland and conversion of land areas to agricultural uses have characterised the whole history of human settlements. From charcoal burning to ship building human depredation has altered the landscape. With the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and the use of coal and steam engines some relief was provided, but in recent decades there has been a return to large-scale rural depredation. A comprehensive critique supporting this pessimistic view is provided by Goetz et al. in a recently published paper [79]. The destruction of tropical forests to provide palm oil is a particular case in point. The UK offers an interesting example of the confused thinking and poor application of planning policy in this field. UK planning guidance has had as one of its Key Principles (PPS 22, 1. iv) that environmental benefits of all proposals for renewable energy projects, whatever their scale, are material considerations that should be given significant weight in determining whether proposals should be granted planning permission. Other considerations in PPS 22 included that feedstock fuel availability should be at a maximum distance of 40 kilometres, while an Energy Crops Scheme demanded that input crops should serve a biomass plant also within a 40 kilometre radius catchment area. It was therefore odd that a Planning Inspector assessing a developer's Appeal for burning rapeseed oil or palm oil in a proposed electricity generating plant in Central England (Chelveston, Northamptonshire) allowed the Appeal. The Planning Inspector, Mr. Alan D. Robinson, wrote that he “must deal with the Appeal in the light of current national planning guidance that biomass and energy fuels are regarded as sources of renewable energy” – which he claimed included palm oil to be transported some 11,750 km from points of origin. (June 3rd, 2009). A witness contesting the Appeal had pointed out that according to the best expert advice then available 33 t of carbon dioxide were emitted on average in Indonesia for every 1 t of palm oil produced – and the deforestation caused major habitat and species loss (including that of the Orang Utan) [80]. This proposal, unlike some in Germany and Italy, has never gone ahead, for reasons which have never been made clear. Other such schemes have gone ahead in the UK – for example, using palm oil from Malaysia shipped from Port Kelang. These cases raise fundamental questions about the application of even clearly worded planning guidelines, an issue which again is not confined to the UK. Another curious case concerns the former coal-fired electricity generating plant at Drax, in Yorkshire. Again, parallels with this case can be found in Germany. At Drax it was decided to burn ‘waste wood' or ‘wood chips’ alongside the remnants of coal-fired burning, and £750 million was invested to make this possible. The financial attraction was anticipation of gaining between £450 million and £500 million in annual subsidies. But under a Freedom of Information request in February 2016, it was revealed that the destruction of hardwood forests in Louisiana and Florida, USA, was the source of much of these ‘wood chips' or ‘wood pellets’. This destruction has been the subject of investigation in the USA [81]. Another report has Drax receiving hardwood ‘pellets’ from North Carolina and Virginia, ‘pellets’ from pine woods in Louisiana and Mississippi, and plans to burn wood from Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul [82]. This source also reported on threats to other forest regions – in Europe and especially the Carpathian Mountains across Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine and Romania. It has been estimated that if the EU's 2020 renewable energy targets are to be met up to 16 million hectares of energy crops will be required (and wood is a much denser source of energy than crop residues). In many European countries ancient woodlands continue to be felled, including areas supposedly protected by law, and (in the UK) officially designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Among these supposedly protected forests is the 195
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Methods and Applications, Routledge, Abingdon, UK, 2011. [6] Michael Woods, Deconstructing rural protest: the emergence of a new social movement, J. Rural Stud. 19 (2003) 309–325 (page 312), for aspirational realism or often in pursuit of the rural idyll. [7] Oystein Aas, Patrick Devine-Wright, et al., Public beliefs about high-voltage powerlines in Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom: a comparative survey, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 2 (2014) 30–37 Quotations from page 36. [8] Patrick Devine-Wright, Beyond NIMBYism: towards an integrated framework for understanding public perceptions of wind energy, Wind Energy 8 (2) (2005) 125–139. [9] Maarten Wolsink, Wind power implementation: the nature of public attitudes: equity and fairness instead of ‘backyard motives, Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 11 (1199) (2007) 1188–1207. [10] Patrick Devine-Wright, Matthew Cotton, et al., Experiencing citizen deliberation over energy infrastructure siting: a mixed evaluative study, in: Stefan Bouzarovski (Ed.), The Routledge Research Companion to Energy Geographies, Routledge, Abingdon, England, 2017, pp. 184–199. [11] Alain Nadai, Oliver Labussiere, et al., Exhaustible-renewable wind power, in: Stefan Bouzarovski (Ed.), The Routledge Research Companion to Energy Gepgraphies, Routledge, Abingdon, England, 2017, pp. 306–329. [12] Dan van der Horst, NIMBY or not? Exploring the relevance of location and the politics of voiced opinions in renewable energy siting controversies, Energy Policy 35 (2007) 2705–2714 for NIMBY-ism in general. [13] Dean Apostol, et al., The Renewable Energy Landscape: Preserving Scenic Values in Our Sustainable Future, Routledge, Abingdon, UK, 2017. [14] David Matless, Landscape and Englishness, second edition, Reaktion Books, London, UK, 2016. [15] Edward Abelson (Ed.), A Mirror of England: An Anthology of the Writings of H.J. Massingham (1888–1952), Green Books, Bideford, Devon, England, 1988is a convenient starting point for entering this large volume of literature. [16] W.H. Hudson, A Shepherd’s Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs, Methuen, London, 1910. [17] W.H. Hudson, The Book of a Naturalist, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1919. [18] Richard Jefferies, Wild Life in A Southern County, By the Author of The Gamekeeper at Home, Smith, Elder, London, 1879. [19] Richard Jefferies, The Toilers of the Field, Longmans, Green, London, 1892. [20] George Bourne, Change in the Village, Duckworth, London, 1912. [21] Flora Thompson: A Country Calendar and other writings, in: Margaret Lane (Ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979. [22] H.J. Massingham, et al., The English Countryside: A Survey of Its Chief Features, B.T. Batsford, London, 1939. [23] ‘BB’ (Denys Watkins-Pitchford), The Naturalist’s Bedside Book, Michael Joseph, London, 1980. [24] H.E. Bates, The Face of England, B.T. Batsford, London, 1952. [25] Dean R. Baldwin, H.E. Bates, A Literary Life, Associated University Presses, Cranbury, New Jersey USA, 1987. [26] Stephen Spender, Poems, Faber & Faber, London, 1933, pp. 57–58. [27] James Purdon, Electric Pylon Cinema Poetry, (2013) October http://amodern.net/ article/electric-cinema-pylon-poetry/. [28] John Sutherland, Stephen Spender, The Authorized Biography, Viking/Penguin, London, 2004 (page 107). [29] Nerida M. Anderson, et al., Contested beliefs about land-use are associated with divergent representations of a rural landscape as place, Landsc. Urban Plann. 157 (2017) 75–89 (page 87). [30] Oliver Hilliam, CPRE, Pylons, n.d. (work in progress), CPRE, London. I am greatly indebted to Mr. Hilliam of CPRE for providing me with his unpublished survey. Last entry July, 2007. But paper is undated as stated. [31] Peter Waine, Oliver Hilliam, 22 Ideas that Saved the English Countryside: The Campaign to Protect Rural England, n.d., Frances Lincoln, UK. Year of publication 2016 (appears at end of book. There is no date at front of book). [32] Paul Brassley, et al. (Ed.), Transforming the Countryside: The Electrification of Rural Britain, Routledge, Abingdon, England, 2017. [33] Fiona Reynolds, The Fight for Beauty: Our Path to a Better Future, Oneworld Publications, London England, 2016. [34] Nan Fairbrother, New Lives, New Landscapes, The Architectural Press, London, 1970 (page 108). [35] Vanesa Castan Broto, Energy landscapes and urban trajectories towards sustainability, Energy Policy 108 (2017) 755–764. [36] Jessican de Boer, Christian Zuidema, Towards an integrated energy landscape, Urban Des. Plan. 163 (5) (2015) 231–240. [37] Stephen Bouzarovski, Martin J. Pasqualetti, Vanesa Castan Broto (Eds.), The Routledge Research Companion to Energy Geographies, Routledge, Abingdon, England, 2017. [38] Martin Pasqualetti, Paul Gipe, Robert W. Righter (Eds.), Wind Power in View: Energy Landscapes in a Crowded World, Academic Press (Reed/Elsevier), San Diego and London, 2002. In this book Laurence Short's Wind Power and English Landscape Identity (pages 43–58) is strongly recommended. [39] Alain Nadai, Dan van der Horst, Introduction: landscapes of energies, Landsc. Res. 35 (2) (2010) 143–155. [40] Sven Stremke, Andy van den Dobbelstein (Eds.), Sustainable Energy Landscapes: Designing, Planning, and Development, Taylor & Francis (CRC Press), Boca Raton, Florida, USA, 2013. [41] Lucas Amin, Shell and Exxon’s €5 Bn. Problem: Gas Drilling That Sets off Earthquakes and Wrecks Homes, The Guardian, UK, 2015 October 10. [42] S. Hirschberg, et al., Energy from the Earth, Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, Zurich, 2015.
World Heritage Site of the Bialowieza Forest, covering an area of nearly 142,000 ha on the border of Poland and Belarus, but which is now being destroyed despite “a structured dialogue” taking place between the EU Commission and Poland since 2008 to control this [83,84]. Brazil’s Sierra Ricardo Franco Park was supposed to be a conservation area, but is being stripped for farming amid allegations of corruption and lawlessness [85]. Yet it is well established that the use of wood as an energy input can, over its full lifecycle, result in carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in volumes exceeding the burning of coal [86]. The use of crops and crop wastes as biomass and biofuel inputs arguably does not pose the same threats to the landscape. However, the diversion of food crop acreage to Miscanthus, for example, does raise issues of food availability and prices. The spread of monoculture should also be constrained. There has been much discussion about secondgeneration biofuels – using non-food residual parts of crops through fermentation to produce lignocellulosic ethanol – and third-generation biofuels using algae, over the past twenty years, but apart from one large-scale demonstration plant run by Iogen in Canada and one joint project it has with Raizen in Brazil there is little progress that can be reported. 8. Conclusion A realistic assessment of the future of rural landscapes under the pressures to engage in a transition to a low carbon future indicates huge challenges ahead. The visual intrusion of wind energy developments on rural landscapes, and the beginnings of visual intrusion of solar ‘farms’ and further transmission linkages as well, raise acute concerns about where the world is headed. The amounts of land required to accommodate solar ‘farms’ and CSP are very considerable. Already the efforts to exploit modern biomass and biofuels have raised severe problems and concerns. The displacement of people and severe disruption of traditional work patterns and culture have been particularly severe in the hydroelectricity sector. The efficacy of policies, measures, and investments has been shown to be severely inadequate – as have been the performance of many of the regulators, bureaucrats, and planning inspectors introducing, scrutinising, and applying them – not least in protecting scenic landscapes and guiding the positioning of renewable energy schemes optimally. Perhaps some of the issues raised here are a reflection on societies where many are losing touch with nature in an urbanising world. A recent UK poll concluded 70% are in that position, exposing “a nation significantly removed from its land and natural habitats”, “where people have little knowledge of the country's wildlife”, and where 13% “had not even been to the countryside for more than two years” [87]. These results were in line with a survey conducted by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in April 2017, which found over 50% of the respondents could not identify a chaffinch, and over 20% did not know a red kite was a bird. Whether such indifference and/or ignorance will win over the concerns of the “over 8 million people in the UK”, who support “Wildlife and Countryside Link” through its 45 member organisations and 170,000 volunteers, remains an open question but not one imbued with optimism that the latter will eventually win [88]. References [1] Patrick Devine-Wright (Ed.), Renewable Energy and the Public, Earthscan, London, UK, 2011. [2] Michael Jefferson, Closing the gap between energy research and modelling, the social sciences, and modern realities, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 4 (2014) 42–52. [3] Michael Jefferson, There's nothing much new under the sun: the challenges of exploiting and using energy and other resources through history, Energy Policy 86 (2015) 804–811. [4] Martin J. Pasqualetti, Reading the changing energy landscape, in: Sven Stremke, Andy van den Dobbelsteen (Eds.), Sustainable Energy Landscapes: Design, Planning and Development, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 2013. [5] Lynne Manzo, Patrick Devine-Wright (Eds.), Place Attachment: Advances in Theory,
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