The consideration of alternative locations for renewable energies must not be a reaction to the dwindling acceptance of the energy system transformation. Rather, it should be at the beginning of any site planning and thus enable a transparent, democratic negotiation process for sustainable land use. On the one hand, location alternatives can result from the fact that a location search area is successively extended or restricted by minimising or maximising restriction criteria. On the other hand, a site search area can be extended by an area category that has not yet been included in the site calculation. Both aspects were taken up in this project, because the aim was to develop spatial corridors for the implementation of the Bavarian wind energy shift. The spatial patterns resulting from the GIS-supported location analyses for wind turbines were made available to spatial planning as a basis for the designation of exclusion, reservation and priority areas. Only a uniform procedure of the regional planning associations based on potential analyses can prevent a patchwork of energy concepts and point the way to a balanced spatial development for location planning processes. Therefore, the aim of the project was to examine the wind energy suitability of open land and forest sites and to identify those spatial patterns of wind energy that not only meet the quantitative requirements of the Bavarian Wind Energy Decree, but also meet the qualitative requirements of the greatest possible socio-ecological compatibility.

selected publications:

• Ludwig N., Bosch S. (2014): Windenergiepotenzial auf Offenland- und Waldstandorten. In: Strobl J., Blaschke T., Griesebner G., Zagel B. [Hrsg.]: Angewandte Geoinformatik 2014 – Beiträge zum 26. AGIT-Symposium Salzburg, 117-126.
• Ludwig N., Bosch S. (2014): Standortalternativen für die Windenergie – Berechnung des Ertragspotenzials auf Offenland- und Waldstandorten in Bayern. In: Raumforschung und Raumordnung, 72 (4), 293-308. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13147-014-0294-7