Wind power is one of the renewable energy solutions to meet the challenges of climate change. However, it comes with potential conflicts with other sustainability goals, such as biodiversity and ecosystem services. These challenges need to be addressed in regional planning, taking multiple sustainability aspects into account. This project aim to develop methods and the related Wind-GIS tool for integrating biodiversity and ecosystem services in wind power planning on regional level, targeting to meet multiple sustainability goals and to support municipal planning. It was conducted in cooperation with the County of Västernorrland. We used spatial multi-criteria analysis (SMCA) methods and developed a tool to find and evaluate suitable areas for wind farm development. We integrated expert knowledge, such as green infrastructure applied on county level, and structured the decision problem in cooperation with stakeholders. Main factors were wind resources and relevant infrastructure, biodiversity with subfactors representing sensitive birds, forest and wetland ecosystems, cultural ecosystem services related to residential areas as well as outdoor recreation, reindeer hearding, and other land use and claims. After aggregating and weighing the factors in cooperation with stakeholders, we designed scenarios using offensive and defensive approaches. Finally 7 sites of 10 km2 were selected for evaluation regarding potential energy output and suitability from wind power developer, social and ecological perspectives. In this way, synergies and trade-offs could be quantified and visualised, and main conflicting factors could be localised and discussed during the process. The methodology and the Wind-GIS tool has potential to be useful for transparent landscape planning on regional and municipal scales.
QC 20190827