Summary: | A transition to a sustainable energy system is urgent due to climate change, on global level and in Sweden. For this transition, wind power plays an important role. According to Swedens national strategy for wind power, the County Administrative Boards were suggested to, in close collaboration with the municipalities, derive expected shares of wind power in order to reach the goal of 100 TWh wind power to year 2040. Simultaneously, wind power can entail social and ecological impacts, among these landscape impacts, noise and flickering shadows, which can affect residential areas, cultural values and recreation. Also reindeer husbandry can be affected. Ecological impacts can be habitat loss and fragmentation as well as collisions with birds and bats, impacting on biological diversity. Wind power development can also create jobs and thus contribute to local and regional economy. In order to develop useful planning support for wind power planning, the current planning practice and permitting process needs to be investigated concerning which aspects of sustainability that are taken into account, factors that are used, and trade-offs that are made between sustainability goals. In addition, planning support tools need to be developed, that can integrate different sustainability goals and work as a dialogue tool in the planning process. A methodology that can be useful in this context is Spatial Multi-Criteria Analysis (SMCA). There are though several challenges associated with using SMCA in real-world planning contexts, where further method development and adaption is needed to increase its applicability. The overall aim of the project “Regional planning support for wind power” (REWIND) was to investigate wind power planning and methods for planning support, to find opportunities for development, where the regional level plays an greater role, providing competence, data, knowledge and coordination. In this way, suggestions can be made on how regional support for wind power planning can be developed to efficiently ...
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