Learning about the social dimension of renewable energies.

My host was the University of Seville, Department of Human Geography, and I stayed there from the 23rd of September to the 5th of October 2018, as a first split of my secondment. I was excited to be the first seconded staff member in the project and to kick-off this type of activity. I am used to traveling, but not in this University context.

Me and my hosts discussed WP2 and the work to be tackled. María José Prados was very welcoming to my ideas on what to work on, so I kicked-off WP2 -Sustainable Implementation: Policies and Practices with a proposal for a questionnaire to be applied on the field. This was later replaced by a final Follow-Up Questionnaire to be used during other secondments, but it was a good introduction to WP2. I was also busy contributing to the website of PEARLS which was not published at that time; made suggestions as to the graphical aspects and contents to be included. On the social aspects of the energy systems, the core focus of PEARLS, I had the opportunity to discuss with the USE team their approach to field work and also did a comprehensive literature review on the subject.

During my stay I had the opportunity the Energy Agency of Andalusia and present the PEARLS project to their team. I also discussed with the hosting team other stakeholders to be engaged in the project.

Since there was still no methodological guidelines for WP2 -these were produced later by the coordinator- my secondment was split so further work will be developed in the near future along with the completeness of the secondments according to the proposed methodology.

Looking forward to going back to Seville!

Natalie Samovich

Understanding the renewable energy sector in Andalusia

In January 2019 I started my two-month secondment at CLANER, in Malaga. My second period of this secondment was spent in Seville, at the offices of Considera, an affiliate of CLANER, in April-May 2019. For the third period I returned to Malaga, in January 2020.

CLANER is a business association, more exactly the Andalusian Cluster of Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency. It brings together over one hundred companies, public administration agencies and departments, universities and research centres that work on this sector and plays an important role in representing their interests and providing expert advice on energy issues.

During the first period of the secondment, under the guidance of Carlos Rojo, I collected information on national and regional energy policies, remuneration frameworks, planning regulations and procedures, the distribution of energy infrastructures in the region, public opinion and siting conflicts. Navigating a sea of legislation, policy documents, regulations, statistical data and media articles, I tried to gain an understanding of the challenges and opportunities for the further development of renewable energy landscapes in Spain. A field trip to the Guadalteba area allowed for a direct experience of the renewable energy landscapes in the Malaga province: the windfarm right framing the village of Ardales, the dam of Guadalhorce with wind turbines in the distant background, the La Camara windfarm in a desolate stretch of the road to Ronda. With land prices at a premium in the Costa del Sol, solar power plants are far less common.

In Seville, documental data collection continued and I was able to carry out an interview with a local group of the energy cooperative SomEnergia. I also took the opportunity to visit the wind farms of Vejer (a best practice case of community participation in renewable energy planning) and of Tarifa, the first to be built in Spain and some of the largest in the country.

In January 2020 the secondment period was used to update the information on RE policies, which underwent significant transformations, with the publication of new laws on self-consumption and energy communities, and collecting more information, documents and news articles.

Data collection during the secondment has been used to prepare several conference presentations and will be used in scientific journal articles.

Ana Delicado

Cultural approach to RET system in Israel

The first part of my secondment in Israel was in spring 2019. Eleven days of intense work during the lead-up to the April 9^th general elections. During this time I had the chance to work with SP Interface’s Daniel Madar and Hagitt Hulanovsky. SP Interface is a spinoff of MIMSHAK, an Israel Society of Ecology and Environmental Sciences program to link science and the environment. SP Interface works in partnership with the Weitzman Institute of Science in Rehovot. WIS is a private institution set up in the 1930s that stands out for its postgraduate studies and research in the fields of the Natural, Health and Exact Sciences. The second part of my secondment was in July. There were then new activities as a lecture in Tel Aviv to MIMSHAK postdoc program fellows and another one in Jerusalem, in presence of the Chief Scientist of Environmental Protection Ministry. As a result of these meetings with technical staff and postgraduate students, I have achieved a broad overview with an exchange of different points of view.

Together with colleagues from these centres, the Beer Sheva and Tel Aviv Universities and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, I had the opportunity to discover more about the current state of RE implementation in Israel and interest in the area of research. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of my secondment has been the fieldwork periods, during which we visited different renewable energy plants throughout the country. The purpose was to appreciate its landscape implementation, the legal existent regulation there and how much the population is implied. There is no doubt that the thermo solar and photovoltaic plants at Ashalim and Ma’ale Gilboa Renewable Energy Wind Farm were the most useful examples for WP2.

Without any doubt, my impression during the secondment was that there is a need to address the disparity between resource availability and current thermo solar and photovoltaic energy implementations as Israel is at a level of development that is far from optimal. The lack of stable regulations on renewable energies in the country’s legislation and the energy available in gas pockets in the Mediterranean Sea make this easier to understand. So, perhaps we should talk of RE technologies than RE landscapes.

María José Prados

Development of a Methodology for Evaluation of Wind Farms

My first commission within PEARLS Project was developed throughout July 2019 at Geosystem Hellas A.E. in Athens (Greece). During this period I collaborated with its CEO and President, Betty Charalampopoulou, and also Christos Kontopoulos.

The work carried out during this month may perhaps be divided into two stages.

An initial stage in which I address the study of wind farms in the Isle of Paros (Greece), as one of the case studies of PEARLS. By using Geographic Information Systems as Qgis 3.4.9 and ArcGIS 10.5.1, both as ArcMap and ArcScene much of the information required for the project is collected, such as aerial orthophotos, digital elevation models and road networks. I have also created new layers of vector information on the edge of the main urban centres of the island, as well as locating the most touristic beaches. I have made progress in applying the procedures and tools made available to researchers by the aforementioned software, in order to delimit the visible areas from the most touristic areas of the island of Paros, as are the two most important urban centres and beaches that have a more natural environment. We have also delimited the areas from which the wind turbines currently active on the island are visible.

A second stage focuses on the analysis of the different methodologies applied in the bibliography reviewed in document entitled Best current practices, which corresponds to June 2019 report within the Work Package 4. The objective is to set the methodology to be followed in the case studies addressed in the different participating countries into PEARLS. The methodology is based on giving positive or negative weight to the different variables involved in the impact assessment (noise, visibility, vegetation, proximity to roads or power plants, wind intensity, etc) and will depend a lot on each case study and will also vary depending on the legislation in force in each country. The publications value the consideration of various local experts and users in granting such positive or negative weights, so one of the proposals will be to develop a questionnaire in which experts and local users will be asked to consider the installation of new renewable energy plants (both wind and solar). The characteristics of the installations in each country may result in different weights of the elements, since some will show more concern not to deteriorate the tourist attraction (therefore visibility will be important) and others for not affecting forest areas, or agricultural areas. In the last days of the stay, progress is made in the design of the questions that are going to form part of the questionnaire.

María Ángeles Barral

Getting to know energy communities in Portugal

 My first stay at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS-UL) took place between 1 and 31 July. The ICS-UL is dedicated to research and advanced training in social sciences, with special emphasis on the current Portuguese social reality.

During my stay I was able to get to know the Portuguese context in terms of energy communities, energy planning, landscape planning in this country and, in depth, two examples of energy communities, very different from each other.

The first one is located in Valverde (Évora), and was originated by a European project led by the large company “Energias de Portugal” (EDP) and called “Sensivel”. EDP has installed 25 new-generation photovoltaic installations in 25 homes or businesses, monitoring the performance of the technology and the consumption habits of users. We have conducted several interviews with citizens and the mayor of the parish, completing the work that had already been done interviewing the head of the project by EDP.

The second energy community is located in São Luís, parish of Odemira. In this case it has been the citizen association “Transição São Luís” which, through the participative budgets of the city council, has achieved the installation of photovoltaic panels in the public buildings of the parish. We interviewed a representative of the association and the facilities.

The visits and interviews were carried out jointly with Joana Sacouto (ICS-UL) and Ricardo Iglesias Pascual (Pablo de Olavide University, Seville), who was also making a secondments in Lisbon in my Work Package.

During this time I have been able to interact and learn from the researchers of ICS-UL, Ana Delicado, Roberto Falanga, Mónica Truninger and João Ferrão, and I have also been able to participate in the seminar “Cities on the make. Tactical urbanism, placemaking and Civic Hacking”, organized by ICS-UL and whose central theme has been innovation in citizen participation.

Understanding the Portuguese experience in the development of energy communities

My stay in the Lisbon company Enercoutim took place between 1 and 31 July 2019. After some first contact sessions with the company, several activities were developed oriented to the knowledge of the Portuguese experiencies in the development of energy communities from the point of view of both companies and consumers.

Thus, through Enercoutim, the energy community project on the island of Culatra was analysed, especially focused on the role played in this project by Enercoutim.

Throught the collaboration with Enercoutim, the energy cooperative Coopernico was contacted. From this contact, interesting information was obtained about other projects such as COMPILE and PROSEUN working on the social impact of energy communities and the role of prosumer in the EU.

With the contact of Coopernico and the knowledge of COMPILE project, information about the energy community project which is being carried out in Alta Lisboa was obtained. In fact, the work to be carried out in the Secondment in Coopernico (July 2020) was planned as well.  Along these lines, contact was made with the Spanish cooperative ENERCOOP which also belongs to the COMPILE project. In August 2019, the cooperative was visited, carrying out an interview and field work about its projects which could be contrasted next July 2020 with the project of Alta Lisboa Energy Community.

At the same time, questionnaires for interviews were prepared and subsequently applied in two case studies:

– Analysis of the EDP projects SENSIBLE in Valverde, Alentejo.

– Visit to the São Luis project with participation of Coopernico.

In both cases, intense fieldowrk was carried out together with Joana Sacouto (ICS-UL) and Michaela Ghislanzoni (Territoria, Spain), focusing on the different roles of social agents in the functioning of an energy community. This aspect allowed us to reflect the role that the initiative of social agents, multinational or local companies should have in the functioning of an energy community and wether the mere fact of using renewable energies in a population nucleus without the participation of its inhabitants can really be considered as an energy community.

All these aspects will be further developed in the next secondment in July 2020 through already planned visits to Valverde, São Luis and Alta Lisboa.

Ricardo Iglesias.

The activity carried out is within the framework of WP3. During the visit to Italy, we made a tour and identification of different parts of the country to meet with main entities in the promotion and development of renewable energies, together with Rossano Albatici, Ph.D. Professor of Building Construction University of Trento we made a main list of entities to visit prior to my visit and there we closed the agenda to visit them and were the following:

• UNITN
• GREEN STORM
• TRL GROP
• TIN
• ELETTRORIZZI
• GREENPEACE

Each one of them provided us with relevant information on the current and future situation of the implementation of renewable energies in the country and their opinion regarding the improvements that can be made to promote their implementation at a public and private level.

The activities implemented in this Secondment contribute to the improvement of the quality of the proposed Sustainable Spatial Energy Plan for Israel.

The activities carried out such as the identification of key actors, the creation of a questionnaire and a shared methodology between the WP3 and WP2 have allowed the improvement of the results obtained as well as the exchange of information and experiences between the Spanish and Portuguese partners. Allowing to share their knowledge and expanding them on the situation of renewable energies in the country as well as the perception of the citizens about them.

In August visited the country of Portugal, with the intention to know in depth his installations of renewable energies and behaviour of the population in this regard, for this interview to different key actors. With the University were seeing the different technologies in renewable energies in Portugal, the most stood out and abundant to difference with the rest of the technologies is the aeolian energy

The photovoltaic area is less developed although we can find us this type of technology in the roofs of houses and in the ones of public buildings as in the big central market of supplies of Lisbon.

Results:

The main results have been

– Questionnaire for interviews

– Identification of key actors

– Actors interviews

– Main benefits and difficulties of the development of renewable energies

The activities carried out such as the identification of key actors, the creation of a questionnaire and a shared methodology between the WP3 and WP2 have allowed the improvement of the results obtained as well as the exchange of information and experiences between the Spanish and Portuguese partners. Allowing to share their knowledge and expanding them on the situation of renewable energies in the country as well as the perception of the citizens about them.

In first, during my stay I was able to familiarise with the Italian context in terms of Environmental legislation for the implementation of renewable energies at the private and municipal levels. As well as the use of them in rural accommodation areas and areas further away from the city and their link with landscape planning.

• Visit the entire mountain area and different rural accommodations as well as the outskirts of the city
• We had coordination meetings with the University of Trento to organize my second part of the stay and enhance the results of the first part.

 In second, during my stay I have done the first step of the D3.2.  Good Practice Report We carried out the work of defining common criteria for the identification of Good Practices in Italy as we had already done in Portugal and Spain, as well as a first approximation of the battery of indicators.

 Results:

• Definition of Case Studies: Based on the characteristics (country of hosting organization, duration of secondments) of WP3 secondments.
• Definition of criteria for each Case Study.
• Creation of actors for each Case Study.

And finally, it has been a great help for my professional development to know the environmental legislation of Italy related to renewable energies.

The activity carried out is within the framework of WP4. This secondment contributes to the creation of a Sustainable Spatial Energy Plan for Israel at National Spatial Planning Scale, related to the installation of new Renewable Energy (RE) projects (onshore wind turbines and PV technologies) in the country. The main objective of this secondment was to conduct field investigation of the sites with the highest suitability for RE projects, as resulted from the developed site selection model, as well as to compare the field data to the model’s results for its validation and improvement.

The main results obtained through this secondment are summarized as follows:

• Contribution to the development of a Sustainable Spatial Energy Plan for Israel.
• Collection of field data for all the required field investigation metrics.
• Correlation of field results with the GIS results.
• Analysis of the highly suitable sites for onshore wind farm and PV farm development in Israel.
• Selection of the final highly suitable sites for siting the examined RE technologies.
• Communication and discussion of the results related to the secondment with local stakeholders.
• Establishment of collaboration between the research groups of AUTH and SP Interface.
• Contribution to a future joint publication of the results related to the secondment.

The activity carried out is within the framework of WP3. During this secondment period the following activities were discussed and implemented:

– Definition of type and format of data for the insertion to the webGIS platform

– Acquisition of all necessary geodata from open access archives and/or official national cadastral & planning organisations

– Definition of the web GIS platform design and layout

– Development of the web GIS portal

– Data Insertion to the web-GIS platform

– Participation with a paper submission to the RSCY2020 conference

Results:

– Vector and Raster dataset ready for the 5 countries – case studies

– Online web GIS portal ready to be configured and populated with the appropriate geodata

Evaluation of the Secondment accordingly to the Project’s repercussion:

According to Task 4.1 Best Current Practices the necessary data format and sources were decided. Vector data depicting REL positions for all countries as well as the main road network and coastline were initially collected in a .shp format. Datasets for each specific case-study of each country will be treated separately in regard of each case study approach, methodology and needs.

Following the tasks 4.2 Advanced Methodologies in Sustainable Energy Planning and 4.3 Case Studies the architecture of the online geographic information system (web GIS) was defined and the platform is online – thus in a beta version with a fair amount of ready data still pending to be uploaded to the PEARLS database and eventually published.

According to Task 4.1 Best Current Practices the necessary data format and sources were decided. Vector data depicting REL positions for all countries as well as the main road network and coastline were initially collected in a .shp format. Datasets for each specific case-study of each country will be treated separately in regard of each case study approach, methodology and needs.

Following the tasks 4.2 Advanced Methodologies in Sustainable Energy Planning and 4.3 Case Studies the architecture of the online geographic information system (web GIS) was defined and the platform is online – thus in a beta version with a fair amount of ready data still pending to be uploaded to the PEARLS database and eventually published.

Additionally, during Period 2 of the secondment, the paper entitled “Planning and engagement arenas for renewable energy landscapes, Paros island example” was co-written with USE colleagues, submitted to RSCY2020 committee and is currently under evaluation.

The first part of my Secondment to Portugal has been in the winter of 2022. It was 21 days of virtual work during the lead-up to the January 30^th general elections and in the context of the Pandemic. During this time I had the chance to work with Coopernico´s João Lopes and Catarina S. Pereira at their office at Lisbon City Centre. I also worked with Ana Rita Antunes virtually. Coopernico is a Portuguese Renewable Energy Cooperative that’s combines its sustainability-oriented and social nature with support for solidarity, education and environmental protection projects.

The coincidence of the pandemic situation after the Christmas holiday period and the government crisis in Portugal with the convocation of elections painted an uncertain picture for this first part of the Secondment. Most of the stay has been researching on renewable energies in Portugal, both official regulations and scientific publications. Together with the company, I have been involved in case research in Portugal to analyze conflicts over the installation of centralized energy plants, mainly due to the construction of new photovoltaic plants in the south of the country. I have also researched on distributed energy, identifying case studies in Portugal, mainly in cities such as Porto or Lisbon, together with some rural communities.

Due to the limitations caused by the Covid pandemic, Coopernico’s staff is partially teleworking, so I have been teleworking from a nice flat in Lisbon cite center but being in continued contact with Catarina, Joaoy Ana Rita. This last one was interviewed virtually because she was sick with Covid.

Without any doubt, my impression during the Secondment will be marked by teleworking and the difficulty of accessing people and study cases due to the limitations of direct contact. And the uniqueness of a city like Lisbon almost without visitors.

María José Prados

During my stay I had the opportunity to work with Territoria to create a plan for PV plants in La Palma Del Condado. An excellent cooperation took place between Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) and Territoria, as both prof. E. Loukogeorgaki and M. Ghislanzoni (respectively) offered me valuable information. The scientific results were both practical and theoretical. In terms of research, a paper was created with the following novelties 

• A methodological framework and tools to determine optimum locations for PV plants in terms of minimizing social disturbance. The optimization problem is solved by developing a Genetic Algorithm optimization technique, while social and economic variables can be taken into account using 3D Pareto fronts. 
• A novel indicator to assess the visual impacts of a new PV installations. 
• A web-GIS application allowing stakeholders to access and visualize the data (
  https://hydraulics-auth.shinyapps.io/PV_La_Palma/) 

The results of the methodology proposed were inserted in the new spatial plan of the municipality.